my iHub

Office or Lotus?

2009-10-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

Personally I've never used Lotus; only to reinstall it back in my computer technician days.
I've always been a user of Microsoft Office and will keep using it unless I find a wider used program for similar functions. I'm a very basic user and I use Outlook for my email client. I will however, attempt to have a look at the online organiser programs because we quite often need to check our colleagues schedules.

Are you a Microsoft Office or Lotus Notes user? Would you consider using LotusLive iNotes over Google online utilities?

Do you think Google needs to be concerned about Bing?

2009-10-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

In an article written today on the News.com.au website, Google has increased some features of their software to allow for fresher content to be displayed at the top of the search results.
(read full article here)
Do you think Google really needs to be concerned about Bing new found fame in cyberspace?
Are you happy with these, and other, changes made by google which effectively could hinder your website position in search results?
What do you think Bing must do to be able to compete with the Google giant?

Write great website copy

2008-10-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

The copy is probably the most important aspect of your website because it communicates important information about your business to your customers and prospects.

Writing for the web is a lot different to everyday writing. Web users read the content of websites very differently to the way they would read a newspaper or book, and you need to be aware of this when you are copywriting for your website. You need to take into consideration the fact that people are scanning your site quickly rather than reading it word-for-word. This means that you need to write clearly and concisely and keep it as simple as possible.

You should do the following for your website copy:

Use keywords

Your copy is important because Google uses it to rank your page in its search listings. Using and repeating keywords throughout your content will make your Google ranking higher, so find out what words your target market search by and incorporate these. Put your keywords in important places like the page title, headings that are formatted differently to the body text and hyperlinks. Try to use keywords three times in the body copy of each page and remember to bold them so they are easy for users and search engine crawlers to find.

Include hyperlinks in the text

All Internet users know that they can click on hyperlinks to access more information when they are reading a webpage. So make sure you include hyperlinks throughout your text so site visitors can easily access other parts of your site for more details. Hyperlinks allow you to keep the information on the page brief and succinct then direct the reader to somewhere else if they require in-depth information. Also, make sure the text that is hyperlinked looks 'clickable' so users know they can click on it.

Use meaningful headings and subheadings

The key to successful copywrting for the web is navigation. Readers don't want to spend time searching through the text to find what they want - they want to be able to glance quickly at your page and be directed to the correct place. So, make your content easy on the eye and simple to navigate by using headings and subheadings. When you are compiling your copy, break it up into logical sections then devise short, descriptive headings and subheadings for each section. When you are putting the copy on your webpage, make sure the headings and subheadings stand out from the rest of the text - make them bigger, a different colour or bold.

Use bulleted lists

Your site visitors will want to find the information they need quickly and easily when they arrive on your site. Make it simple for them by putting detailed or complex information into a bulleted list. Not only does this make the content in the list easy to find on the page, it also makes it much easier to read because it breaks up the text.

Use the inverted pyramid style

The inverted pyramid style of writing is commonly used by newspaper journalists to convey the most important details of news stories at the start of an article. To use this style, identify the most important information on each page of your website - remember, this is the information that is most important to your target audience, not to you. Then make sure you include all of this information in the first few paragraphs or sentences of your page. Using this style of writing is just like starting with the conclusion, rather than taking the whole page to build up to it.
To make your copy easier to scan, you should make sure each paragraph contains only one idea or topic. You should make the idea of each paragraph clear by ensuring that each paragraph has a topic sentence that explains what the paragraph is about. Doing this means that a reader can see the topic sentence and know immediately if they need to read your paragraph or not.

Halve the word count of normal writing

The majority of people using the Internet are time-poor. Therefore, you need to write a lot less than what you would for non-web writing. A good rule of thumb is to write half as much as you would write for other mediums. Go through your writing with a fine tooth comb and cut out anything that is not related directly to the key idea of the page. Also, work on making your sentences shorter and sharper and use simpler phrases to make your writing shorter.

Avoid jargon and complex words

Reading from a computer screen is hard enough without having to negotiate technical jargon and difficult words. Remember, you're not writing an academic essay, so you can use short, simple words to get your message across. Try to avoid using jargon as much as you can, and if you do use it, make sure you explain it in simple terms. Also, don't try to impress your readers with complicated, fancy words - write in normal, everyday language.

As you can see, writing for the web requires different skills and a different mindset to other forms of writing. Follow these tips to ensure your site visitors can find the information they need quickly, which will make them more likely to become customers.

Website gives business a lift

2008-10-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

Coomera’s booming population is set to top 100,000 by 2025 and the Chamber of Commerce is going international in a bid to connect overseas migrants with locals.

Chamber president Moira Williams said the existing Global Coomera website would be integrated with the chamber site to attract more overseas investment.

She said the www.coomeracc.com.au site would give local businesses and overseas chambers a platform to communicate.

“By doing this the area will be opened up for investment and for interaction with other countries,” she said.

“And for people moving to this area, it will give them a connection with the locals so they can get the information they need before their move.”

Mrs Williams said local businesses without a web presence would be able to upload their own information.

“We are looking for ways to help our members communicate more effectively to the public and the website is the perfect tool,” she said.

“Members on the database will also have access when they are overseas, so they can keep up-to-date information on their portal.”

Volunteer website designers My iHub co-owners Paula Johnston and Craige Moritz said they hoped to have the site up within the next month.

But Ms Johnston said the new web address was routed to the old chamber website at the moment so there would no confusion.

“We are making it friendly to search engines like Google and Yahoo, so when people are searching for any local products or services the site will come up,” she said.

She said the interaction on the proposed site would mean local businesses which did not have an understanding of how to market themselves would have access to easy to use design tools.

“The chamber site will act like a hub for the locals to use,” she said.

“It will provide a holistic view of the community to anyone and everyone.”

She said the company would also roll out strategies and seminars to help chamber members understand what was involved with online marketing and positioning.

“We will be giving business a lot more scope,” she said

“Which in turn will bring more revenue and jobs to the area.”

She said by doing the work as a volunteer she hoped to encourage other members to get on board and help create a site that would generate reward for the local community.

How the Internet can streamline your business

2008-10-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

The Internet has only been around for about a decade, but it has already advanced dramatically in that short time. It is now at a maturity level where it can be used for much more than just marketing in a business – it is a fully functional business tool that can provide real bottom-line results for businesses.

One area we have seen massive growth in is the web being used to increase efficiency and save time and money for businesses. It can be used to streamline everything from marketing activities and customer support through to internal processes and administration.

Here are some ways that our clients are using the Internet to streamline their businesses:

Simple seminars

Workshops and seminars are a great, highly-leveraged lead generation strategy. Now, thanks to the Internet, organising events like this is simple and stress-free. You can easily have an event management system build into to your website which allows you to send email invites to your database of contacts quickly and easily. Attendees can click on a link in the email to go to your website and register for the event, and they can even pay for their ticket online using their credit card. People can also register for an event on your website if you advertise it in external media – just make sure you include your website address in all your advertising. You can even send out email and SMS reminders prior to the event and print name tags directly from your guest list. This system will save you lots of time and money – it’s all online so you don’t have to get your staff to make and take calls, it’s easy to keep track of attendees and manage the payments if you have them, and because it's so easy and instant, it will ultimately increase the number of registrations and reduce the number of people that don’t turn up to your event.

Feedback surveys

We all know the value of finding out from clients what they really think about your business, gaining people’s opinions on new services or products, and even getting feedback from your staff. But often, putting together a survey to find out this information is just too hard. The good news is the old way of printing and sending out forms, getting them back in the mail, then inputting and graphing the results has been replaced by simple, fast and effective online surveys. Now all you need to do is write up your questions once, email the survey to your database and sit back and wait for the results. Best of all, the system collates and graphs them for you instantly so you don’t have to lift a finger. Sending online surveys will save you lots of time and money (no postage costs!), and because it’s so simple for people to do, you will get lots more responses. Also, it’s all online so you can easily compare results over time and store them for future use.

Common client requests

A number of businesses have (or could have) forms for our clients to complete for a number of purposes, such as qualifying leads, job applications and information requests. If all the details form these forms could be obtained quickly over your website and passed on to the right person via email, you and your staff would be able to spend less time on administration and more time on actioning the enquiries. Also, the efficient service would keep your clients and prospects happy. It is now possible to easily set up forms like this on your website and you have almost unlimited freedom with the information you can gather . These forms can also have word verification built-in to prevent spam bots bombarding you with junk email. Custom forms provide a great value to your business and give you more time to focus on meeting the needs of your clients.

Customer loyalty

If you want to keep your customers and get them to buy more from you and refer others to your business, you need to show them you care about them. However, it would be impossible for you to call or meet with all your clients on a regular basis to do this, so you need a cheaper and more time-effective way to stay in touch. Now you can use automated emails to communicate with your clients – set up a series of welcome letters to go to them when they first join your business, send ecards on special occasions like their birthday or Christmas, email them deals and promotions to celebrate their anniversary with you and send newsletters to keep them updated. While this won’t completely replace the value of an occasional phone call, it is a great cost-effective way to keep your business at the top of your client’s minds. The benefits of using automated emails is the amount of time it saves you, as well as higher customer retention and increased customer loyalty, which in turn can generate more sales and more referrals.

Online client area

While your existing clients are very important to your business, they can sometimes take up a lot of your time by asking simple, common questions. A great way to solve this challenge is to have an online client area on your website. You can have a searchable knowledgebase with answers to common questions and product manuals for clients to download, as well as a secure area for them to access private documents from your business. For example, an accountant could have all his client’s statements, tax returns and past financial data in an individual secure area for each of them, so if they need something they can just login instead of calling and taking up the his valuable time with administration tasks. A system like this would vary greatly depending on your business, but no matter what you do, it’s a great way to save time, cut your administration costs and keep your clients happy.

Motivating your team

Your staff are an important asset to your business, so you need to be constantly educating and motivating them so they can keep you ahead of the competition. Similar to the online client area mentioned above, you can set up an online resource centre for your staff or agents. There are so many tools you can use for this – for example, podcasts of interviews and lessons, videos of sales presentations, downloadable product guides and sales checklists or even a forum for staff to interact and discuss various topics. As well as this, you can use email marketing to keep everyone up-to-date easily with news alerts, latest marketing offers and educational information. Strategies like this will definitely streamline your business and save you time, but they will also make you more money – an educated and motivated team will definitely get more customers and make more sales for your business.

The opportunities for using the Internet to streamline your business are endless – there are so many products and strategies out there to suit every business, so it’s only limited to your creativity.

We have simple tools to help you with all of the ideas mentioned above, so if you would like to know more, just give us a call and we’ll get one of our expert consultants to look at how your business could be streamlined to maximising the internet more, so you can spend more time doing what makes you money.

White Hat and Black Hat SEO techniques

2008-10-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

The White Hat search engine optimisation (SEO) and Black Hat SEO debate is gathering momentum as SEO becomes increasingly important in the success achieved by websites. As White hat SEO techniques follow the general guidelines of search engines, they are considered ethical techniques and are therefore viewed positively by the major search engines.

On the other hand black hat techniques are those short term tactics that web architects adopt to ‘fool’ search engine crawlers into believing things that may not actually exist on their websites e.g. backdoor ‘cloaking’ and artificially boosting backlinks from link farms (dummy webpages with bogus links). As these are generally un-ethical they are not accepted by search engines and they can result in your website being banned or penalised sites for the use of black hat techniques.

White hat and black hat SEO are two different and generally opposing views on how to carry out effective search engine optimisation. White hats are those website architects that ‘play nice’ and are prepared to wait for long term results to build their site popularity. Black hats are those website designers that want to quickly boost their search engine rankings by cutting corners and are ready to compromise even the readability and content coherence of their sites in the race for better SEO results.

It is not surprising that all search engines today are actively monitoring for black hat SEO techniques as these practices ultimately harm their search result reputation as these websites are not delivering a positive user experience.

Choosing between white hat and black hat

The most important point to emphasise is that Google and major search engine do not consider ethical SEO efforts to be spam. The major search engines rely on ethical SEO companies to provide users an optimal web experience.

Search engines only consider SEO spam when the site is not operating within their quality guidelines and indulges in such activities as hidden links, hidden text, cloaking and sneaky redirects. You can view a complete list of Google webmaster guidelines at: http://www.google.com/webmasters/

The majority of the SEO companies adopt a common-sense approach in making your website user friendly and at the same time ensuring that the site’s architecture is easily accessible to search engine spiders.

In simple terms, SEO is about designing your website based on what people search for, which makes perfect business sense. Taking short cuts or resorting to black hat techniques may actually confuse the readers and in the long run annoy search engine bots.

The general consensus is that Internet users are increasingly beginning to believe that white hat SEO actually translates into a great website plan and design. Whilst Black hat techniques rely on unmindful aggression akin to gambling – so while you might gain a lot quickly, you are at risk to loose all and more (banned for ever) just as quickly as search engines are now more sophisticated than ever.

For a serious business who wants to be successful in the long term and popular consistently, there should be no reason to gamble on black hat techniques. It has generally been observed that those Internet marketers that let their dark-side dominate by adopting black hat techniques often regret it later.

Our advice is don’t get lost in the technical detail of SEO. Keep it simple, know what your customers are searching for on the Internet, design your site to communicate with their search activity, deliver superior value and online success will be yours.s

Web domain questions answered

2008-10-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

Still confused about Domains? I've answered some often asked questions which will hopefully help narrow the gap between you and cyberspace.

What is a Domain Name?
What's the difference between .com, .net, and .org domain names?
What does it mean to "register" a domain name?
Who can register a domain name?
Do I own the domain I register?
What does "transferring" a domain name mean?
Do I automatically have a website once I register my domain name?
What is "URL forwarding"?
What does "web hosting" mean?
Where do I host my website?

What is a Domain Name?

The purpose of a domain name (often referred to as just 'domains') is really to help us find locations on the net. Computers don't normally use words, but use a number system in order to direct traffic to the right place. This number associated with a domain is called a DNS. If you typed the number 75.125.19.104 into your browser you would get the google search engine page come up. Google.com.au is the domain name for this DNS. It's much easier for us to remember names than it is to remember long numbers such as these. Imagine how difficult it would be to try and find the site of a well known business if we had to remember all these numbers? It's really easy for us to think.. "i want to find the site for Harvey Norman", so we just type in the name and presto! However, I will add that the DNS associated with the domain can be changed depending on who is hosting the site.

What's the difference between .com, .net, and .org domain names?

These domain suffixes were originally used to determine the type of company that owned the website.

Business (.com)
Non-profit or Charity (.org)
technology based site (.net)

Now because the Net is so massive these lines have been blurred almost to the point of non existence. Anyone can now register almost any domain they like. People will often register the same domain accross the board (domain.com, domain.net.au, domain.org) to try and protect their online presence and content.

What does it mean to "register" a domain name?

Domain registration, simply put, is buying a domain and putting your personal or company information on the registry to claim ownership of the domain. Domain registrations can expire and are registered for the duration you desire (up to 10 yrs) when you purchase it. There are a number of companies in Australia that offer domain registration.

Who can register a domain name?

Anyone, anywhere can register a domain name. You don't have to have a business or a company.

Do I own the domain I register?

Well to a certain degree, yes you are the owner of the domain. As stated above, domains can be purchased by anyone and the registrations can expire. Really you're just leasing the use of the domain name. When your registration expires the domain is then up for sale and because of this you really need to keep an eye on your registration period. Previously in some cases people were registering domains that were very close to well known company names. This can no longer be done. Laws are in place now so that if a trademark company, for EG. I Love To Surf, doesn't have a website, the domain 'ilovetosurf' really belongs to them. Some businesses have taken legal action on those who have registered domains similar to that of their business name.

What does "transferring" a domain name mean?

Domains can be registered with different registrars. Transferring domains means changing the current registrar. You might do this if a new registrar has a special offer that will benefit you. You're will remain the owner of the domain and transfers must be done before the expiry date of the domain.

Do I automatically have a website once I register my domain name?

When you register a domain you don't automatically receive a website or emails. You need to find a suitable service to host your domain. This is an extra charge to your domain registration and there are a few domain hosting packages which you could choose from depending on the host. The host is where you physically store your webpage and / or email information.

What is "URL forwarding"?

URL forwarding allows you to redirect traffic from one domain to another. Let's say you have registered www.mysite.com and www.mysite.com.au. You can setup URL forwarding so that if someone types www.mysite.com.au into their browser it will pickup on the forwarding and send the browser to www.mysite.com. URL forwarding is great if you have purchased more than one domain to protect your content.

What does "web hosting" mean?

Web hosting is a service that 'Hosts' provide to put your webpage on the internet. The documents, images and other content that make up your website need to be 'online' at all times for your page to be accessible. There are also other technical settings and parameters that need to be in place for it to all work smoothly, which the hosts provide. It's much more economical to you to use a host rather than look after it yourself.

Where do I host my website?

When you register your domain, you can use any host you like. Hosts normally offer plans that give you all that you need depending on your usage.

Using flash on your website

2008-10-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

Question:

I'd really like to put some Flash on my website to make it look nice but I have heard that it is bad and that I should avoid it. Is this true?

Answer:

Flash is an animation software that is used to create movies and interactive websites. If your website developer doesn't know what they are doing, Flash can negatively impact on your website in several ways, but if done correctly, it can enhance your users experience and make you look professional.

There are several ways that Flash can be used on a website:

Flash site - an entire website can be built in Flash, meaning it is highly interactive and the user has alot of control over what they see and when they see it. A Flash site typically has lots of elements that move around the page as the user moves and can often be very difficult to navigate. Here is an example of a Flash site - www.coca-cola.com.au
Flash introduction - some websites have Flash just on an introduction page to their website to catch the attention of visitors. A Flash intro page is usually a movie with animated elements and sounds and after it finishes, the user is taken to the standard website. Here is an example of a Flash introduction - www.marketingmentor.com.au
Flash header - a header is a much simpler way of integrating Flash into a website. The body of the website is a standard, static page and then a banner at the top is animated with moving pictures and text. This is a great way to make a site look professional while still being simple to use. Here is an example of a Flash header - www.gcluxuryvintagecarhire.com.au
Flash movie - any website can have a movie built into it using Flash. Movies are a great way to add to a site and make it more interesting and generally don't cause any issues for users. Here is an example of a Flash movie - www.okmagazine.com.au

As mentioned, Flash can be a great asset to a website but only if it is done by a website developer that is up with the latest standards and really understands the business applications of the internet. If they don't understand this, you could end up with a website that is completely useless for you and your clients. While Flash headers and movies are relatively uncomplicated, introductions and entire sites made from Flash can really cause problems for your website and affect it's success. Here are some of the typical issues caused by Flash:

Usability
For a site to be 'usable' it should follow the standards that people are used to on the internet today, such as a menu across the top or down the left and a consistent page layout. Flash sites are notoriously hard to use because they don't always have a set menu or page layout that remains the same throughout the site.. If a site is too complex to use, most people will just leave and go somewhere else. This is why Flash sites are not recommended for business sites, particularly ecommerce sites - you can lose customers and profit by having a site that is too confusing. A Flash introduction shouldn't impact the usability of the site at all, as long as there is a simple skip option for people that want to get straight into the site if they wish.
Search engine optimisation
In the same way that search engines can't read images, they can't easily read Flash either, so any content and navigation you put in Flash is invisible to search engines. This can obviously have a very negative affect on your search engine ranking - if your page can't be read, they won't appear in search results and you will miss out on clients. Flash introductions used to have a bad reputation for this, but there are now ways around it if your website developer knows what they are doing. If you do want an introduction to your site, make sure your developer can build it so search engine crawlers can bypass and it get to the rest of your site. If you want to have your whole site built in Flash, you need to think about it carefully because you could be risking your search engine position.
Load time
As a general rule, Flash takes longer to load than HTML so if you have too much Flash on your site, it will take a long time to fully load. Most internet users are time poor so they most likely won't sit and wait for your site to load - they will just leave and go to a quicker site. This isn't as much of an issue now that broadband is so widespread, but it's still important to consider.
Software issues
To view anything built in Flash, a user has to have the relevant version of Flash Player installed on their computer. If they don't, they can't see what's on your page and either have to download the right version or just go to another site. Do you really want to turn potential customers away from your site just because they don't have the latest software? If you only have small Flash elements around your site, such as a header or a movie, this won't be a huge problem but if you're whole site is built in Flash, a lot of people won't be able to use your site.

As you can see, there are lots of reasons why a Flash-heavy site is not a good idea. However Flash does have it's benefits if used correctly. It can brighten up a page, capture the attention of prospects and instantly set the mood of a site. It can even help in the sales process by showcasing the strengths of your business and positioning you as an up-to-date market leader. We all know the saying 'a picture tells a thousand words', so you can communicate alot about your business with some simple Flash elements on your site.

So to Flash or not to Flash? Well it really depends on the purpose of your site and the skills of your website developer. Here are some tips:

We don't recommend a full Flash site because of the issues listed above and also because it would make it impossible for you to edit it yourself.
A Flash introduction can be great for some websites (eg. design-related companies), but only if your website developer can prove they are up-to-date with the latest methods that will ensure your site's search engine ranking isn't affected.
Flash headers are a great asset to any website and we highly recommend them because they look professional and show visitors what your site is about instantly.
Use Flash movies to add value to your site (educational and instructional clips), engage prospects (interviews and case studies) and generate sales (showcase the product in use).
Try not to put Flash elements in positions that people associate with advertising, such as above the header at the top of the page or down the right side, because often people will unconciously overlook these areas and may miss your important message.
Overall, Flash should add to the page not take it over, so keep it small and professional and use it to complement your other content rather than to communicate important information.

The latest internet usage statistics

2008-10-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

We all know that the popularity of the Internet is sky-rocketing, but what are the actual numbers? Here are some of the most recent statistics about Internet usage in Australian households:

Australia has 11.3 million Internet users
64% of Australian households have Internet access
Australians spend more time online than watching TV – 22 hours per week for the web compared to 14 hours for TV
In NSW, QLD, WA, ACT VIC, more than 50% of of Internet users log on every day and users in TAS (43%), NT (42%) and SA (43%) aren't far behind

And what about online spending?

52% of people research a product or service online before they buy it instore
61% of Australian Internet users regularly purchase goods and services online
Australians aged between 25-34 shopped online the most (71%), followed by 35-44 year olds (66%)
The 4.4 million Internet users that don't shop online say they have no need to (34%), have security concerns (20%) or prefer shopping in person (19%)

These statistics are from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Use of Information Technology 2006-07 report, Forrester research 2006 and ABC News 2008.

Spam trigger words to avoid

2008-10-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

Spam is a huge issue on the internet these days and unfortunately, it has impacted on businesses that send legitimate bulk emails. It means that we have to work alot harder to get our emails to our reader's inboxes.

All email programs (from Hotmail to Outlook) have in-built spam filters that scan incoming emails to determine if they are spam. One of the things it checks out is the words in the content of the email and in the subject line - if it finds words that are 'spammy', the program will mark your email as spam and the recipient will probably never see it.

So if you want to make sure they do read you emails, you need to avoid the words below:

$$$
100% free
Ad
Affordable
Amazing stuff
Apply now
Auto email removal
Billion
Cash bonus
Cheap
Collect child support
Compare rates
Compete for your business
Credit
Credit bureaus
Dig up dirt on friends
Double your income
Earn $
Earn extra cash
Eliminate debt
Email marketing
Explode your business
Extra income
F r e e
Fast cash
Financial freedom
Financially independent
Free
Free gift
Free grant money
Free info
Free installation
Free investment
Free leads
Free membership
Free offer
Free preview

Guarantee
'Hidden' assets
Home based
Homebased business
Income from home
Increase sales
Increase traffic
Increase your sales
Incredible deal
Info you requested
Information you requested
Internet market
Leave
Limited time offer
Make $
Mortgage Rates
Multi level marketing
No investment
Obligation
Online marketing
Opportunity
Order Now
Prices
Promise you
Refinance
Remove
Reverses aging
Save $
Search engine listings
Serious cash
Stock disclaimer statement
Stop snoring
Thousands
Unsubscribe
Web traffic
Weight loss

Obviously some of the words are common business phrases, like 'web traffic' and 'free offer', so it is difficult to avoid them. We suggest that if you must use one of these phrases, just use it once per email otherwise you are risking getting your email blocked. If you can, try to use synonyms like 'complimentary' instead of 'free' or changing the wording a bit so you don't get picked up by the spam filters.

'Google Analytics' website benchmarking

2008-10-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

With its latest industry benchmarking offering, Google Analytics is enabling users who opt-in, to measure their website performance data as compared to the collated industry data. Google takes your website analysis data and plots it against industry data so that you can clearly see the comparisons. This new feature gives you the ability to overlay various industry web-performance averages on top of your own web-statistics.

When you agree to share your data Google removes all identifiable information about your site, then combines that data with hundreds of other anonymous websites in similar/comparable industries and shows them in an aggregate form. To make better use of this feature you should also share data on such other Google services like AdWords and AdSense that you maybe using.

The benchmarking data shows comparisons for the last 30 days across such aspects: visits, bounce rates, page views, pages/visit, new visits and average time on site. By default, your website is compared with other websites of similar size and industry, though you could also restrict the benchmark to such general categories like travel, internet, reference and shopping.

Since this data is aggregated from websites that agree to participate in the benchmarking program, it may not include all your industry peers, but in the absence of any other similar service from other internet promotion service providers, it is better to analyse it than work in the ‘dark’.

Google has announced that it will soon add new categories as new websites sign up for its data sharing-benchmarking service.

Getting your business online

2008-10-19T19:39:00.000-07:00

In today’s internet age, having an online presence is essential for most businesses. A website can be a valuable business tool for conducting sales, contacting current and potential customers, promoting products and building brand loyalty.

But getting your business online isn’t a quick process and there are a lot of important considerations when setting up a website. This guide will outline the seven stages of building a website for your business.

Step 1
Form a strategic plan

Before you jump in and start organising your website, you need to have a detailed strategic plan. You need to know exactly what the purpose of your site is before you start because this will affect every aspect of your site, from the content to the navigation.

A good strategic plan contains the following:

What are your business objectives?
Who is your target market (specifically define your ‘best’ client)?
What makes you stand out from your competitors (your USP)?
Why do you need a website (its purpose)?
How will you achieve your objectives?
Budget - how much you can afford to spend?

Step 2
Choose an internet partner

This is the most important decision you will make throughout the process of getting your business online. If you choose a good developer the process will be easy and hassle-free and your website will meet all your business needs.

The first step in choosing a developer is to research. You should visit some of your favourite websites and find out the name of the company that developed that website. Once you have found a company that you like, browse their website and read their testimonials from clients and case studies of their work.

It is also important to make sure that the company is reputable, so visit Website Standards Association to see if they are members, or even contact some of their clients and ask them firsthand. Once you have decided that this is the developer you want to work with, you need to contact them and set up an initial meeting and get a quote.

Step 3
Prepare a creative brief

Once you have contracted a developer to create your website, you will need to prepare a creative brief. In this brief, you describe all the creative aspects of the site that you want, from colours, to logos, to flash designs. Your website developer will probably have a creative brief form that you can easily complete and it is a good idea to work with the graphic designers on staff to get their expert opinion on the creative side of your website.

Step 4
Secure a domain name

Once you have a website, your most valuable business asset will be your domain name, or web address. This is how your website will be identified on the internet, so it is a very important consideration. Here are five useful strategies for choosing a domain name:

Consider your target market – are they going to find your website through a search engine, or by guessing your address? What suffix (.com, .net, .org) will they associate with your business?
Protect your business – you need to purchase variations on your domain name in all your current and future countries of trade to ensure that you always have access to the domain name you want
Don’t be too clever – use a simple domain name, because if you try to be clever, you might just confuse people and make it hard for them to find your site
Don’t make it too long – make your domain name something short that is easy for people to remember and won’t be misspelled

Step 5
Add value to your site

Depending on the purpose of your site, there are particular tools that you will need to have on your website to achieve your outcomes. For example, if you want to:

Get more customers - you will need tools such as photo gallery, article listing, Flash header and a blog to draw traffic to your site and build your brand
Make more money - you will need tools such as a shopping cart to make sales online and advertising manager to generate extra money
Save more time - you will need tools such as a client filing system and a membership manager to cut your administration time

If your website developer can't provide these tools for your site, contact My iHub to find out how we can build you a website with all these tools.

Step 6
Make your website live

After your website has been thoroughly tested, your website development company will set it live. This means that your business is actually online and your customers can start using your site.

Step 7
Promote your website

Once your site is live, you need to promote it so your prospects know where to find it. Here are four ways to market your website:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – many people will find your website through search engines such as Google, so you need to get your site ranked high in their search listings. To do this, you need to include keywords that your prospects might search for in important places throughout your site, like the page title and bold headings. You should also get as many reputable websites as possible to link to your site, because the more sites link to yours, the more important Google will think your site is and the higher it will rank it. Thirdly, you need to have an .xml site map of your website easily available so Google’s ‘crawlers’ can find it and determine the content of your site (this is included on all My iHub websites).
Email marketing – a great way to promote your website is to send regular email campaigns to your database of contacts. You can give them updates and special offers to encourage them to visit your site and to tell their friends about it. You can also have a sign-up form on your website to add prospects to your database automatically.
Offline advertising – you need to include your website address in all your offline promotions to ensure that your prospects are aware of it. Mention it in all your print, radio and television advertising and on all your business documents, such as brochures and invoices.
Pay-per-click advertising – this is an online marketing technique where your business places an ad on a website, such as Google, and you only pay when a user clicks on the advertisement. You bid on keywords related to your business and then when a user searches using those keywords, your ad is displayed at the top of the search results. This is a great way to promote your website because many prospects can be exposed to your ad, but you only have to pay when someone actually clicks on the link.

Get more readers with punchy email subject lines

2008-10-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

Once you have written all the content within your email, it’s all done and ready to be sent out, right? Wrong! You’ve forgotten the subject line, one of the most crucial factors in email marketing success.

The subject line is what appears alongside your name (the sender) in your recipient’s email inbox and identifies what your email is about. If your subject lines don’t identify your business and explain what the email is about, or if they sound too ‘spammy’ then your readers won’t open them and your campaign won’t generate the results you want.

Writing subject lines is particularly difficult because you are limited to around 50 characters because this is all that is displayed by your recipient’s email program. This means you need to keep it short and sharp and make the most of every single character you have. It also means that you may not be able to mention everything in the subject line that is covered in the email. Therefore, you need to be like a journalist when they write headlines – choose the most newsworthy angle and focus on that in your subject line.

Here are some tips for writing your subject line:

Make it informative
As mentioned, the subject line needs to immediately tell the reader what the email is about so they can make the decision to open it or not. If your subject line doesn’t contain enough detail, the recipient will probably delete it, or worse, mark it as spam. Remember, all consumers view emails from a WIIFM (‘What’s In It for Me’) perspective and will only open an email from you if the subject line indicates they will get something out of reading it. Many experts now also recommend including the name of the newsletter or mailing list in square brackets at the start of the subject line so the recipient can immediately recognise the email as something they have signed up for. For example: [Bloomnews] Subject Line Tips, Discount Offer. This example includes the name of the newsletter and also two important features of the email that will attract attention.

Don’t be misleading
The quickest way to lose a customer is to lie to them. This rules applies to email subscribers too – if your subject lines are misleading and the reader doesn’t get what they were expecting from your email, they will simply unsubscribe from your mailing list. So don’t promise things in the subject line that the email doesn’t deliver on. For example, the subject line “Free shipping on all items this week” will probably send your open rate through the roof, but if the contents of your email explain that free shipping is only for orders over $500, only to selected regions and only for the second item purchased, your readers won’t be impressed. It will more than likely damage their opinion and trust of your brand or encourage them to mark your emails as spam, preventing any future communications from you.

Create interest
While it’s important that your subject lines are informative, it also needs to grab the attention of the recipient and make them want to open your email. Your campaigns will be competing with dozens of other emails in your recipient’s inbox, so your subject line needs to be intriguing so you stand out from the crowd. To create interest, your subject line needs to have a hook that will stimulate the recipient’s brain and make them open the email. Some great hooks include humour, making money, saving money, benefits and fear – all of these things appeal to people in different ways and can make them curious enough to open your email.

Work with the sender line
When sending emails, many business people only focus on the subject line because it is one of the most talked about parts of the email. However, they should also be thinking about the sender line and ways to integrate it with the subject line for better results. The recipient will look at both lines to determine what the email is about and if the sender can be trusted. The sender line should contain something that identifies your business – such as the company name as the sender or the name of a person from the organisation combined with the company name. Maximising the sender line also has the added benefit of giving you the full length of the subject line to focus on grabbing the recipient’s attention.

Test, test, test
There is every chance that a small change to your subject line could significantly increase the open rate for your emails, but you will never know this unless you conduct testing. For some businesses with small lists or basic software, testing may not be possible, but if it is then you should definitely be doing it. The easiest way to test subject lines is to segment your audience into groups and send the same email with different subject lines to each group to see which line gets the best open rate. Then use a similar type of subject line for your next campaign and so on, with a new test every few months.

Follow these tips and you will soon be writing effective, attention grabbing subject lines that send your open rate through the roof!

Easy ways to generate leads for your business

2008-10-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

All businesses need to be spending some time and money on generating leads, because new leads mean more sales and greater profits. The key to lead generation is using a variety of strategies at the one time. Just advertising your business in a local newspaper probably won’t generate a large number of leads for you to turn into customers – you need to be utilising a wide variety of marketing tools simultaneously to really reach your target market and draw them to your business.

This does not apply just to big businesses with large marketing budgets, because there are numerous cost-effective strategies that small businesses can use to generate leads. For example, a small local clothing shop could be combining their local newspaper advertising with a website, a newsletter, listings in various directories, building and car signage and a stall at the local markets. All of these strategies are very cost-effective and would expose a large number of potential customers to their business and products. Lead generation is not difficult, you just need to be creative and take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself.

Here are some lead generation strategies that you may not have thought of using for your business:

Networking groups

Many business people go to networking functions for trade associations, chambers of commerce and other organizations on a regular basis. Most of them view these events as a boring hassle and do everything to avoid them. However, networking events are an excellent lead generation strategy for businesses, because the other business people that attend them are consumers too and need products and services just like the rest of us.

So, instead of standing in the corner and counting down the minutes until you can leave, walk around and start up conversations. You can even ask the people you meet for permission to add them to your database of contacts. It is also a good idea to follow up with the people you have met after the event with a quick phone call or email to build the relationship.

Alliances

Building alliances with other businesses that target a market similar to yours is a great way to generate new leads for your business. Choose a reputable business that treats its customers well, engages in proactive marketing strategies and is open to trying new things. Once you have built a relationship with this business and have come to an agreement, you can start targeting their clients with your own marketing.

A great strategy is to write articles on topics you are knowledgeable about and have them placed in the newsletter of your alliance. You could also write an ebook on your area of expertise and give it your alliance to give away as a gift to their clients. Another great strategy to implement with your alliances is a joint event. You can share the organizational time and cost, and then invite clients from both businesses so you both have the chance to generate new leads.

Brochures

Brochures are an effective lead generation tool for businesses because they give prospects initial information on the product or business and encourage them to take the next step in the sales process. An eye-catching brochure that is designed well, conveys the benefits of what you offer, has a powerful call-to-action and is distributed in appropriate locations will attract many potential customers to your business.

Brochures are a great strategy for businesses because they are relatively inexpensive to produce and can be distributed in several ways. They can be sent directly to prospects in a direct mail campaign, handed out at trade shows and events and displayed at your business and with your alliances.

Trade shows

Trade shows are an excellent way to promote your business and generate leads. If you choose the right trade shows, many of the people there will be prospects that you can engage with and turn into customers. Some types of trade shows that are a great place to find leads include:

Local business expos
Chamber of commerce shows
School business expos
Industry trade shows

To generate leads at trade shows you will need to be really prepared and have thought a lot about your techniques.

You will need to have experts on your stand that know your products and have excellent communication skills. You also need to have a way of qualifying leads so you don’t waste time and money chasing leads that only visited your booth for your freebies.

Referrals

Referrals, or word of mouth, is the number one most successful lead generation strategy. And best of all, it's completely free. If your business has great products and services and a great team, your clients are bound to rave about you to people they know. It's a well known business fact that if a person hears about a business from someone they know and trust, they are more likely to become customers than if they just saw an advertisement for the business.

So, you need to be proactively seeking referrals from your clients. Don’t be afraid to ask for referrals – if you are a good business and you ask politely, the majority of your customers won’t hesitate to give you referrals. Remember to reward clients that give you referrals with a small gift, a thank you note or a discount.

These 5 strategies are all simple, cost-effective ways to generate leads and I recommend that all businesses engage in at least some of them. Using these less-common strategies combined with your other marketing activities such as newspaper advertising and directory listings will ensure that you always have a constant stream of new leads to convert into customers.

9 Facts about SEO that all businesses need to know

2008-10-19T19:07:00.000-07:00

Statistics like "51% of all Australians research online before making a purchase" highlights the importance of getting your site high in the organic (free listings) results of search engines when a person searches for a word/s related to your business. The process of making adjustments to your site so it displays high for keywords your target audience are using is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Now I am not going to kid you - SEO isn't a quick and easy task. If you don't employ an expert, the following guidelines should make you more informed and highlight the key things to get you started so you can improve your site's ranking. You will find most of your competition probably have done nothing down this path, so just doing a little will help your site greatly.

We have based the following on Google, mainly because most Australians use this search engine.

Here are the top 9 facts you should know about SEO:

Fact 1 – SEO is a long, ongoing process

Optimising your site is an ongoing process that needs constant attention. When a new site is launched, it can take Google anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months to even find the site and store it in their database, and then another couple of months for the site to earn a place in search results. Then once your site is up and running, boosting your PageRank (the scale that Google uses to determine the importance of your site and therefore where it ranks in searches) takes time and effort – updating keywords, writing new content and organising links are all time-consuming, and then you have to wait for Google to find your changes. So be patient.

Fact 2 – Do your keyword research

You need to use keywords throughout your site so it gets listed in the search engine results when a consumer conducts a search using those words. Therefore, you need to know what words your target audience are searching for so you can use them in your content. This is called keyword research – first you brainstorm a big list of all the words and phrases related to your business (even ask your clients), then use keyword generator tools to narrow down this list. You also need to look at the competition for keywords and choose more specific words – “massage” is far too common, so try something like “corporate massage Sydney”. Keyword research is essential for SEO – learn more about it here.

Fact 3 – Quality content is the key to success

The hardest thing about optimising your website is creating content that is balanced between the needs of search engines and the needs of your target market. If it’s too SEO-focused, it will be gibberish for users but if you don’t use enough keywords you won’t rank well on search engines. The main thing is to only use keywords in your copy when they make sense and not to overuse them (the recommended is about 3 of the same keyword per page). Try to use variations of your main keywords through the text, because search engines will pick up on those too. Overall, the best thing you can do is research your content thoroughly, tailor it to the needs of your business and write it well – the search engines can tell if your copy is good, and they’ll reward you for it.

Fact 4 - You need keywords throughout your whole site

Many people are under the misconception that you only need to list your key words on your home page - although that is important, it is just as important to use them throughout the site and adjust your keywords to the content of each page. Keywords are important to be considered for your page title, meta keywords, descriptions (for our clients - you can easily input this in thewebconsole.com when you edit a page), headings, and content.

Fact 5 - Black hat techniques don’t work

When SEO first became a hot topic, some ‘smart’ people tried to trick the search engines by keyword stuffing (putting long lists of keywords in pages), using invisible text (putting keywords in the background colour so users couldn’t read it but search engines could) and creating fake pages. These techniques worked in the short-term, but soon the search engines figured out what they were doing and penalised them. Now, the search engines are on the lookout for unethical things like this and will immediately ban any website that engages in black hat SEO. So no matter what anyone tells you about how quickly it can boost your ranking, don’t do it! It’s definitely not worth it.

Fact 6 - Search engines can't read images

Take advice before having a flash site or one with lots of images and not much content. This can go against you as the search engines don't register words that appear in images. This is also important to consider for when you use flash in navigation, as keywords importance is also measured here. For our clients, to make it easier for Google to log your site and content, your site is automatically mapped in text (see the site map at the bottom of your site) and in XML - so everytime you make a change to your navigation or add a page, it is automatically adjusted.

Fact 7 - The playing field can change at any time

The algorithm that Google uses to analyse and rank websites is not guaranteed – Google can choose to change it whenever they want. Websites that don’t keep up-to-date with the changes will slide down the rankings and get overtaken by sites that follow the new algorithm. It’s very important that your website developer or SEO consultant stays up-to-date with the algorithm so they can advise you or make any changes quickly and keep your site ranking high. If you are serious about your SEO and want to focus on it as a strategy for getting customers, you will need to employ a professional to help you, not only to keep up-to-date, but also to do keyword research, update your content and get other websites to link to yours.

Fact 8 – Updating your site regularly will make you search engine friendly

As mentioned, SEO isn’t a one-off thing – you can’t write really good copy with lots of keywords and then leave it on your site for 2 years. You need to constantly update and improve it by adding in new articles, newsletters, updating statistics and product descriptions, rewriting and tweaking copy and fixing broken links. Changes like this will draw search engine spiders back to your site, which will help you climb the ranks. Constantly updating also ensures you are using still using the right keywords to reach your market and that your content is fresh and interesting for the humans that use your site!

Fact 9 – Getting links is essential

So you’ve done your keyword research and have great copy on your site, but do you have any other sites linking to you? The content of your site is only half the battle in SEO –you need to have lots of other websites linking to yours so the search engines think you are important enough to put at the top of their rankings. Don’t get links using schemes like linkfarms, because Google will penalise you for this, and also try to avoid reciprocal links (“I’ll link to you if you link to me”), because Google doesn’t place much importance on these either. Build links by sharing your content with other reputable sites – sharing articles and ebooks, commenting on blogs, listing your business in directories and showcasing your work on community sites. And make sure you include a text link to your website every time you contribute something to another site.

Put some of these ideas into action and you might just see your site start to climb the search engine rankings. This article is not designed to be a complete SEO guide, but it should educate you about SEO and how important it is to get it right. If you want some expert guidance on optimising your site, click here to see the SEO services that my iHub offers.

My iPhone makes my computer blue screen

2008-10-19T17:28:00.000-07:00

So, I get a call from a friend of mine..

"Hey, Craige, I got one of those new iPhones. They're awesome you should come and check it out!"

"Yeah, no worries mate, I'll come round this week and take a look at it."

The phone's quite cool looking, and runs pretty good...that is until I connect it to his computer to sync his contacts.

When I connect the phone the computer bluescreens and dumps to memory. So what can I try? Here's some ideas.

Try the iPhone in Safe Mode

Test the USB ports

Replace the driver files

Reload the iPhone

Test the iPhone in a different computer

To make things as easy as possible we need to isolate the problem and by trying these above we should be able to work out what's wrong.

1. Test the USB ports. Any other devices that you might have that run on USB, these days that is virtually everything that connects to a computer, can be used to test the USB ports. Plug them into the same port and see what happens. If you can use the device then we can, for now, assume that the USB ports are working fine. I had a USB flash memory drive that i connected and it came up all good. NEXT...

2. Test the phone in a different computer. If you have another computer at your place you can plug the device into it and see if you can use it as normal. In this case, if you connect it and can use it then we can assume, again for now, that the iPhone is working fine and is all in order. If the device and computer play up again, we would be almost certain that the iPhone is faulty and would need to be returned. Luckily I had my laptop, and connected the iPhone which came up fine and working. So, it's not the iPhone. NEXT...

3. Try the phone in Safe Mode. Safe Mode runs without loading as many drivers or applications on startup, so if one of these is causing a problem with the device i will be able to view it in safe mode. In this case I can. You can access the startup items when in 'Normal' mode by going to Start -> Run -> and typing in 'msconfig'. Click on the 'Startup' tab and it will show me a list of some applications that start when Windows boots. If I untick an item it will not load next time the computer starts up, but don't worry we can always turn it back on. I removed everything from startup, restarted the computer and still the computer crashed with a blue screen. Now that the fault is still occurring I need to go 'deeper underground' as it were and look at the drivers. NEXT...

4. Reload the iPhone. I'm not sure if any of you have installed the iPhone, but it doesn't come with a driver disk. You can just plug it in, and in a perfect world, it will install and be ready for you to use in iTunes. so, I can hardly reinstall the software without reinstalling Windows, which I don't want to do at this point. NEXT...

5. Replace the driver files. ALL devices need a file to make them run properly, this file is called a driver. You can see what drivers a device is using by going to the Device Manager, selecting the device and looking through the properties. I look at the driver information under the iPhone and see a file name that I don't recognise. Let's GOOGLE this file and see what comes up, and it turns out that it's a file that is used by Logitech hardware. I decided to uninstall all the Logitech software from Add/Remove programs in hope to remove the driver and see if I can install the iPhone again. VIOLA! The iPhone doesn't cause the system to bluescreen anymore! Our result was that it was either a corrupt or incorrect driver causing the system to play up.

With the device now correctly installed and working properly we can move on to syncing the iPhone with the Outlook contacts on the computer.

How do I choose keywords for my site?

2008-10-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

Question:

I understand how important it is for my website to be on search engines but how do I go about choosing the right keywords?

Answer:

All your search engine optimisation efforts are dependant on the keywords you choose for your website so it's very important that you choose the right ones. Keywords are the words and phrases you think best define what your business is about. They should always be based on what your target market would use to find your business on search engines, not on what you think would be best.

To choose the right keywords you need to conduct keyword research. Here are the steps:

Step 1 - Brainstorm

The first stage of researching keywords for your site is to generate a list of terms and phrases relevant to the industry and what the site or business offers. This could produce a list of between a dozen to several hundred keywords. List all of the most important words and phrases currently on your site and put yourself in the mindset of the your customer and vendors and think about what they would search for. Also, look at what your competitors are using.

Step 2 - Estimate numbers

Get a count for the keywords in your list using some of the following tools:

At this point, your keyword spreadsheet will have one column for the keyword, a column for each keyword research tool and a column that lists the average count for each term.

Step 3 - Add new terms

Expand your current list of keywods and phrases by adding a new term that the various research tools suggest. Try to compile a large variety of keywords and phrases from the tools and get search estimates for each of these additional keywords. Remember, only add relevant keywords that will bring valuable traffic.

Step 4 - Give the keywords a relevancy score

Once you have built your list of potential keywords go through each term and estimate what you think its relevancy is to your site (0% - 100%, with 0% being the least relvant keywords and 100% being the most relevant).

Step 5 - Estimate competition and difficulty

There are various ways to estimate how competitive a keyword can be:

Use the keyword research tools like keyCompete, Spyfu, Adwords Keyword tool estimator and Keyword Discovery all have features that allow you to see how highly competitive a keyword is.

Search for a keyword and see which sites are being displayed in the top 10-30 results. See what terms these sites have in their title tags and anchor text. Pay attention to sites that repeatedly rank in the top results as these sites are your main competition.

Give each a percentage based on what you percieve their difficulty to be and add it to your spreadsheet.

Step 6 - Choose the keywords you want to compete for

It is crucial to know each keyword's difficulty and competitiveness, as choosing competitive keywords will require more work, and will be much harder. It is suggested that you choose up to 10 keywords and focus on these to start with.

Graphics on your website

2008-10-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

Creating high quality e-books, reports and web graphics can be a very lucrative business, but not everyone is cut out for the task. For instance, to create a high quality product, it takes a considerable amount of time, effort, patience and creativity.

Today's top Internet marketer is constantly looking for new product and content to promote. His or her talents consist of the ability to write well and maintain organization. He knows how to spot high quality subject matter and he doesn't mind taking time to do the research, as this type of research can be quite time consuming, especially when you are coming up with a product that will set you apart from the crowd. The ability of the author to create and design e-book covers and graphics is equally as important, and will come in quite handy for the Internet marketer with somewhat of a creative mindset, but if there is no creative ability there at all, he will need to have a graphic designer for his e-book covers and web site. Being able to design your own e-covers and web graphics with the right software can save you a lot of money in this business but there is one other thing to consider: You may be able to create a mediocre web site with no graphics and save yourself a little money, but is that going to be to your greater advantage in the long run?

Keep in mind that the web graphics are one of the first things that the potential buyer will see when your product is being promoted. That, and your sales letter as a whole. So, if your wanting to create your own web graphics, you can save yourself a ton of money in the long run, but you want to make sure that you have the right software to do it with.

In my opinion, I think that it's far better and much more profitable for that author to outsource his or her graphics to a web graphic designer. The downside to this is that paying someone to make your graphics for you every time you need them can get very pricey in a short amount of time. But for the novice, this may be the only way to go.I truly believe that by presenting high quality web graphics, along with your product promotion, you are ranking yourself as a high authority on the subject matter that you are selling.

Remember: first impressions make lasting memories. You surly don't want to come off as a second rate salesman. You are an authority in your niche and do not hesitate to let everyone know it.

My iHub

Google launches petrol price tracker

2008-10-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

This week Google has launched a new system to track fuel prices and keep consumers up to date with the cheapest prices in their area.

The Petrol Price Tracker Gadget was launched after the search engine noted an increase in the number of searches for fuel prices. The system finds the price of unleaded, diesel, LPG and other fuel types at service stations based on the location or postcode supplied by the user.

The gadget was created in partnership with petrol monitoring company Motormouth, which supplies updated petrol price data to Google 13 times per week - twice per day between Monday and Saturday and once on Sunday.

The results of a petrol search can be ranked by lowest price or distance from the location supplied, and the user can also view the location of service stations on Google Maps. According to early users, the tracker doesn't have data from all petrol stations, particularly outisde major cities, but it is an important step forward in the monitoring of petrol prices in Australia.

The Petrol Price Tracker Gadget is available through iGoogle, which is a personalised Google homepage that users can add applications to (calendars, news feeds, games etc.) - sign up for a free account here.

My iHub Homepage

What is a USB flash drive

2008-10-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

USB Flash drives, (or memory sticks, pen drives) are probably one of the most useful recent inventions for computers. They come in heaps of shapes and capacities, and are really cool! (nerd alert!) Since their release the prices have dropped dramatically, and the capacity as increased heaps. They can store photos, data, music and much more and they've successfully replaced the floppy drive, and even the cd-rom in some cases.

A floppy disk can hold about 1 and a megabyte (1.44MB), but USB flash drives hold gigabytes (GB). Even CD's only hold 750MB so USB flash drives are much more practical. Plus they are much smaller in size which means that transportation is easy. They often come with a lanyard (neck chain) or can even be small enough to fit in your purse or wallet.

Some technical jargon

1024KB (kilobyte) = 1MB (megabyte)

1024MB =1GB (gigabyte)

A good quality photo is about 100KB

An MP3 music file is about 3MB - 6MB

A document file can be anywhere from 25KB upwards

This list could go on for some time, but this will give you some idea about what you can store on a USB flash drive.These days flash drives start at about 2GB and I've seen them up to 64GB. Some laptops that are 3 years old don't even have 64GB internal hard drive! Prices start from about $15 for a 2GB and go up to around $100 for a 16GB drive.The designs do vary but they're mostly similar with the USB connection in one end, the body, and then lanyard hook. Some are more compact than others, then there are others like one from a company called Sandisk (my personal favourite). It is more an SD memory card, than a USB flash drive, however it fold in half to reveal a USB connector that goes into a computer or stereo. Now I can use this in my digital camera, and then plug the memory card in to my laptop..no cables required. You might say, but you have a card reader on your computer. Well I don't, but all computers have USB!

Another cool thing that some flash drives can do is run programs. There is a standard that is knows as U3 and some common applications such as Thunderbird & Avast Anti Virus have a U3 compatible edition. What does this mean? U3 USB flash drives, when connected, temporarily install a menu structure, similar to the Start menu, and will let you run your applications from the USB flash drive as if they were installed on the computer. When you remove the drive, the programs and data go with it leaving no traces at all on the computer they were plugged in to. This can only be done with a U3 drive.

We recently bought a new stereo for our lounge room. I'm not sure when the last time you looked at a stereo was, but there's some serious decisions to be made. MP3 is almost a common term nowadays and many devices can play an MP3 audio file. Some time ago car stereos and home stereos added the ability to read MP3 files that were copied onto a CD, but now stereos are coming with a USB socket that you can use with a USB flash drive that has had music copied onto it from a computer! How good is that?! No more wasting time burning a disk. One last thing that I'll mention is durability. These things aren't made from some indestructible material, especially if you get a cheaper one, although some come in Titanium shells. The plastic can be pretty flimsy, protecting it against very little. If you could shrink yourself to the size of a USB flash drive, and put yourself in your handbag or your pocket or your children's school bags; how long do you think it would take for you to get a broken leg? My point is that USB flash drives get knocked around a fair bit, like when you throw your keys on the table with your drive on the key ring, and they aren't smash proof. They're made of tiny electronic parts and flash memory which are highly sensitive to shock. In my time with computer repairs, I couldn't count the times I've had to tell someone that their USB flash drive is broken and they've lost their school assignments, photos or work documents. Faulty USB ports can also blow up a flash drive because they surge power through the socket to power up the USB device.

So in conclusion I highly recommend using USB flash drives because they're so versatile and cheap. However don't use them as a backup because they can break, don't put any data on them that you don't have a copy of somewhere else because they can break, and try to be gentle with them...because they can break!

Tips for email marketing

2008-10-19T16:59:00.000-07:00

The Mailing List

Your mailing list is the basis of your email marketing operation. The list is compiled of all of the details of the people who will receive your email campaigns, but you MUST make sure that these contacts have expressed their explicit agreement to receive such correspondence. You should treat this list like gold! Without any email addresses you will severely limit your exposure and risk all of your hard work being ignored. By having a sign up page on your website, you will be able to attract more people and hopefully they find your content interesting enough to allow you to add them to your mailing list.

Removal from your mailing list

It is illegal for you to prevent your contacts from being able to remove themselves from your mailing list. You must have a link to do this or information on every campaign which they can follow to stop receiving your emails. The removal process must be simple and it's courtesy to tell your contact that they have been removed from your mailing list.

When size does matter

You must remember that there are still people out there that don't have a fast internet connection and you should adjust your email campaigns to compensate for this. There are 2 ways in which you can do this;

1/ you can send your email with the images as attachments. This would take a long time for someone with a slower net connection to download, but once the email has been downloaded they can open it quickly and view it when they're not online.

2/ you can layout your email with links to images throughout the text. This type of email will download very quick but when it is opened it may take a few seconds for the email to look right because the images have to download every time the emails is opened.

The popular option is the latter because it's better to keep the total size of the email quite low.

Mailing Frequency

Just because you have received a positive response to your first email campaign, it's not necessarily a good idea to send out more immediately. Sending out high frequency emails can be a great way to get a negative response. Having said this it's a good idea to send them out regularly and not keep the reader waiting too long in between drinks. Try and stick to fixed intervals like a weekly newsletter, sent the same time every week.

Timing of Mailing

Back in the 'Old Day's' it was believed that the best time to send an email was overnight when the computer servers were under lower impact from internet traffic so that your message would get to where it was going safely. Several researchers found that the time you send your email is critical based on the fact that people are more responsive at certain times. It's recommended that if your email is directed towards private surfers that you send your email towards the end of the week when they're all starting to wind down. If it's directed to business individuals, you’re best to send your email in the beginning of the week particularly in the morning and late afternoon.

Subject Line

The subject line is the first place your recipient will look to decide if the email is worth opening or not. Don't make your subject line too long or difficult to read or you will lose your impact. Try to make it tempting or intriguing but don’t make it too pretentious so that the reader doesn't think that it's junk mail. There has been research to show that using a personal opening, such as Dear (first name), will increase the possibility of your email being open.

Reporting

Your email marketing software may have some reporting features that will allow you to gather more information about the users who opened and clicked through on your email. You may be able to see what links to certain pages they clicked on which will allow you to fine tune your contacts to include groups like all of the recipients who clicked through onto your brand new kitchen appliance page. This will give you some advantage and more tools to achieve your goals.

Call to Action

Why are you sending this email out? If it's information on a new product you want the recipient to be able to click on a link to go to the new products and easily be able purchase the item. Think of what you want to achieve from your email campaign and provide the means for these goals to be met. An email, as successful as it might be, looses it's power if it doesn’t have the motivation for ACTION!

The design of the email

Large images and animations may initially grab the attention of the reader but it won't be long before the graphics take up so much attention that they won't be able to read your email and will trash it. It's better to be simple in design so that your reader doesn’t feel overwhelmed by what's going on in you email and they can continue on to read what's actually important. A few simple images are fine, perhaps a picture of a product that you're basing your email on, but do over do it.

Uniformity

Your first email will take a large investment to produce in comparison with your follow emails if you do it right. It's recommended that you build a fixed template newsletter that will follow on through your future emails. This will make it much easier for your readers to find the information they're after and to navigate through your letter and it will also make it easier for you to direct them to your Course of Action. People are scared of change and they'll feel much more comfortable if they know the way around your newsletter. Plus it will save you time when you write your next newsletter.

Check your email thoroughly

Before you send your email, make sure you do broad checks to ensure that everything is working. You must check things like links and anchors, text size and formatting, images, headings, spelling, etc.. It would appear unprofessional if I were to receive an email that didn't work properly, was not designed well or had simple spelling mistakes. How can your reader be directed to your website if your links aren't working?

These are just a few tips to help you get the most out or your email campaigns and I’m sure if you take note of these you will start to notice a change in the way your readers treat your emails and you might even start to see some conversions! Good Luck!

Don't waste your money!

2008-10-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

I've recently been in the market for some little trinkets for my business, something that we can give to our clients as a little thank you. I've browsed online and stumbled on a few things that I felt would suit but I want more information.

Most websites have a contact us page or even an enquiry form that you can fill out for a request for more information. So I follow through to their Contact Us page, spend a few minutes filling out the Enquiry Form with my contact details and the information that I'm after and submit it all. Should be as simple as that, shouldn't it?

Well, it's been 2 weeks now and I'm yet to receive a reply by email or phone from 3 different websites with any information that I was after!

As a consumer my initial experience with these 3 businesses has been negative as can be expected and I'll never go to them or refer them ever again. As a business owner knowing that our investment in our website has been successful and someone has hit our page to seek more information but our end has completely ignored the request would instantly turn me into a rabid animal!

If you're going to spend a lot of money and time into servicing your clients by getting a website up and running, then you need to make the most of it. Could you imagine someone walking into your premises and asking for information about the products you sell only for your staff to completely ignore them or even tell them "No thanks, we don't want your business"? That's what these business have virtually said to me. We don't want your business.

Now, it could be that there is a problem with their site causing the completed form to fail in being sent to the right person, but that is still your responsibiltiy to ensure that everything is working. Test your website pages and forms on a regular basis to make sure that everything is working properly and if not it can be fixed promptly. Websites are made up of computer coding and certain bugs can result from a number of areas reasons and it won't be until someone actually tells you that something is wrong that you actually know, but by this stage you may have already lost a substantial amount of business and income. Ask yourself; would you trade in 15 minutes a week to test your website to make sure that all traffic to your site is being properly converted? I know I do!

So you've invested your recourses into increasing your online presence and providing a better service to your potential clients by building a website, now MAKE IT WORK!

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ACCC cracks down on dodgy websites

2008-10-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

Australia's corporate watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, has conducted a sweep of Australian websites this week looking for sites that make fraudulent and deceptive claims.

As part of a global operation under the banner of the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network, the ACCC has checked hundreds of websites for dodgy claims, scams and misleading messages in an attempt to ensure online traders follow the same rules as other businesses.

In the sweep of 750 websites, the ACCC came across 140 which were making dubious claims and potentially scamming consumers. Some of the problem sites included:

Family geneology sites
Lottery and ticketing sites
Sites selling body enhancement products
Mobile ringtone sites
Complementray medicine sites
Work-from-home schemes

These sites will now be further investigated by the ACCC and site owners will be forced to substantiate their claims. This investigation is a step towards making the web safer for consumers.

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Why is my computer slow?

2008-07-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

Can you eat your dinner or even spend a day at work in the time it takes your computer to boot into Windows? Computers can become slow for many reasons;

Not enough recources
Computers doesn't meet the requirements of the software
Faulty hardware
No free hard drive space
Overheating

Not enough recourses

Your computer has a limited amount of recourses to run programs. When you install aprogram it will add information to your registry and startup configurations. Over time these can come quite large and, depending on your computers RAM or page file, can take your computer longer to start up and run much slower.

Let's say that your computer is running a Celeron 2.0GHz CPU (central processing unit) with 512MB RAM. This may be ok with a new computer and may run great for a few months. As the startup lists gets bigger and bigger down the track your computer may need to load 30 or even 40 programs before you can even start using windows. Each program that loads will consume a small portion of your RAM and not release it until the program closes.

Now, you can see if your computer is starting so many programs your RAM is being chewed up and may only be leaving 200MB for your operating system to run properly. A lot of these programs can be disabled from startup without hindering the functionality of your working computer. By reducing the startup list it will free up your RAM and hopefully make your system run the way it should.

Computer doesn't meet the requirements of the software

When developers and programmers design and write software they do it with a certain computer performance benchmark in mind. It may be a simple program like something to write a letter that doesn't need much CPU power or RAM to run properly. One thing with this though is as they release new versions of these programs and as computers become faster over time the benchmark for the performance level of the computer also increases. So a computer you had 4 years ago that you used to write letters on with no sign of any degrading performance may not run as good with a program that was designed 4 years later.

Games are extremely popular on computers these days and are quite strict in the hardware performance levels needed to run them properly. They consume massive amounts of recourses to get the picture on the screen moving at an acceptable resolution and frame rate. Picture the Celeron 2.0GHz system with 512MB we had above; there is a very high chance that a current 3D game would run very poorly if it even ran at all on this system. It's simply not fast enough to cope with the advance calculations the software needs.

These days you would be considering a dual-core CPU, at least 1GB of RAM and a decent graphics card before it even came up on the screen. Even then these parts can be upgraded even further to increase the game performance.

Faulty hardware

Faulty computer parts can sometimes have an unpredictable result on how a computer runs. I'll give an example on a scenario that I've experienced before.
A hard drive contains all the files that a computer needs to operate properly. An arm on inside the hard drive moves in and out from the centre of a magnetic spinning disk reading the information on it and passing it through a cache system then onto the CPU and RAM for processing. A cache system is like a short term memory for the hard drive and contains recently used files so that the hard drive arm doesn't need to go back and forth constantly to get the same data. If the cache unit becomes faulty then the hard drive has to do more work and this slows the rate at which it can read data and pass it onto the other parts, hence slowing the overall performance level of your computer.

No free hard drive space

Above I mentioned something called a page file. This is a file on your hard drive that is used to process information for the computer to run properly. It's a file that can be managed by your operating system or can be manually configured by you. The size of the file is related to the amount of RAM you have on your system. If your hard drive is full then the operating system is not able to create the required page file size and will run slower in order to cope with the limited size.

Overheating

If you've ever opened the side of a computer tower you would have noticed that the temperature inside was warmer than that outside. This is because of the electricity that is pumped through the circuitry and processed by the CPU will cause these parts to heat up. I've actually seen footage of a CPU overheating and catching on fire!

CPU's have a technology built into them which is like a thermostat and assists in regulating the heat output of the CPU as it needs to be at an optimum temperature to process data properly. If a CPU heatsink comes loose or a fan is broken and stops cooling the CPU then it will overheat. This is where the thermostat kicks in and reduces the throughput of power to the CPU reducing temperature but also unfortunately reducing performance.

Some gamers and computer guru's perform something on their computers hardware that is called overclocking. This concept is all about keeping the CPU and GPU (graphics processing unit) at a very cool temperature so they can actually push more power through the hardware making the computer work harder and faster that it was designed to do and increasing the overall performance.

Don't go thinking that your computer is going to burn your house down as CPU's these days are designed to cut the power to the computer when their temperature becomes high and unstable.

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What is wireless?

2008-07-23T20:04:00.000-07:00

Wireless Networking

Wireless networks are used to share files, internet access, printers and more. Or you can sit outside or in any room of the house and check your emails. It's easier to install wireless than you think.

If you are running Windows XP you will want to make sure you have no lower than service pack 2 installed. This is not an iron need but will make things much easier for you. There are also many windows updates and patches in Service Pack 2 that will help protect your system from a lot of worms and viruses.

Windows Vista is now becoming the norm for new computer users and it's now much easier than before to configure a wireless network for home and office.

You want to make sure you have all the right equipment to get your wireless network installed successfully. When you look for wireless adapters and routers make sure you get them with the 802.11g specifications as these guys are the most common. There are new technologies out now such as 802.11n which can be too expensive for the average user, so I'd recommend staying with 802.11g.

Required Hardware

ADSL / Cable broadband internet connection
Wireless 802.11g router/modem
802.11g compatible wireless receiver

One important thing to ensure is that your wireless connection is secure. To do this you will need to install a password inside your routers wireless configuration. This will prevent your neighbours connecting to your router and downloading at your expense.

We can supply these and other hardware and configure your wireless network at home or office.

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Starting your own online community

2008-07-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

Online communities are a great way to get your customers and prospects interacting with your business. Establishing a community group on your website is also an effective way to boost your site traffic and generate leads. For more information on these groups and the people that participate in them, read my other article.

To build a group around your business on your own site, you can use a blog or an online forum. A blog is a page on your website where you regularly communicate to your audience in the form of a journal. Blogs can contain any content that the author chooses, from personal experiences to political commentary, and entries are dated and displayed with the most recent first. Blogs are a great way to position yourself as an expert, and if you write regular posts with quality information, you will attract loyal readers that will interact with your blog and give you valuable feedback. To learn about starting your own business blog, read my other article here.

An online forum is a discussion room on your website where users can post comments and messages on a variety of topics. A forum can create a more interactive community than a blog, but is much harder to set up and manage. You have control over the topics and can moderate the discussion, but you will need to give the participants some freedom when it comes to what they communicate about. Forums are a great way to engage with your audience and get them coming back to your site regularly. An online forum will require specialised software to be added to your site by your website developer. Find information on Bloomtools’ simple to manage online forum tool for businesses here.

Starting your own online community can be quite slow initially. This is because people won’t take the time to contribute to small groups with few participants. However, once the community starts to grow, more and more users will be attracted to the group and motivated to contribute, further growing the group. So don’t be put off if your group doesn’t instantly have hundreds of active members – promote the group to your database of contacts and in other online chat rooms and forums and wait patiently for it to bloom.

When starting a community, some things to keep in mind are:

Trust the member's input – don’t moderate their inputs too heavily. Of course, offensive or illegal content should immediately be removed, but generally you should allow constructive criticism of your business to appear on your forum. You can get some great customer feedback through this and will make users feel that you value their opinions.
Make it easy to contribute – people will be instantly turned off from contributing to your site if the process of registering and posting messages is too complex. Only ask for essential information during registration (you can always find out more about them later) and make it really quick and simple for them to add comments to the forum.
Allow members to get credit by measuring their contributions – users of your forum should be able to increase their status in the group. They should be categorized based on their level of participation within the group, such as ‘newbie’ or ‘expert’. This rewards the best users and makes them feel like their contributions are appreciated, which will strengthen their brand loyalty and encourage them to participate more and to tell others about your business.
Allow other members to respond to contributions – in order for your forum to be truly interactive, users need to be able to respond to the contributions made by others. This can create excellent in-depth discussions between participants and foster the community feeling within the group.

Starting an online community group on your own website is definitely a worthwhile strategy for building your brand awareness, attracting visitors to your website and generating sales leads. They can also be a great way to gather feedback from your audience to improve your business. However, you need to be dedicated to promoting and maintaining your group in order for it to benefit your business.

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Promote your website

2008-07-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

Once your site is live, you need to promote it so your prospects know where to find it. Here are four ways to market your website:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – many people will find your website through search engines such as Google, so you need to get your site ranked high in their search listings. To do this, you need to include keywords that your prospects might search for in important places throughout your site, like the page title and bold headings. You should also get as many reputable websites as possible to link to your site, because the more sites link to yours, the more important Google will think your site is and the higher it will rank it. Thirdly, you need to have an .xml site map of your website easily available so Google’s ‘crawlers’ can find it and determine the content of your site. It is important to only have links from sites relevant to your products and services and only if they already have a high page ranking. Download the Google Page Rank tool to check.
Email marketing – a great way to promote your website is to send regular email campaigns to your database of contacts. You can give them updates and special offers to encourage them to visit your site and to tell their friends about it. You can also have a sign-up form on your website to add prospects to your database.
Offline advertising – you need to include your website address in all your offline promotions to ensure that your prospects are aware of it. Mention it in all your print, radio and television advertising and on all your business documents, such as brochures and invoices. It is important to promote unique landing pages relative to the advertising because then you have less clicks to achieve a quantifiable outcome.
Pay-per-click advertising – this is an online marketing technique where your business places an ad on a website, such as Google, and only pays when a user clicks on the advertisement. You bid on keywords related to your business and then when a user searches using those keywords, your ad is displayed at the top of the search results. This is a great way to promote your website because many prospects can be exposed to your ad, but you only have to pay when someone actually clicks on the link. Learn about Bloomtools Search Engine Marketing services

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No picture on screen?

2008-07-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

Why is there no picture on my screen when I turn my computer on?

Have you ever turned your computer on but no-one was home? This can happen for a few different reasons. First of all, check your connections. Cable's can come loose after being kicked under desks and curious kitties.

I've found that the most common cause of this, believe it or not, is a build up of dust inside the computer resting on the gold contacts of the circuit boards. Dust conducts electricity and will build up over time and in some cases cause your computer parts to act as if they were faulty. Removing the internal hardware and cleaning them with an electrical cleaning solvent will definitely help in bringing the old girl back to life.

This can happen after computers have been in storage for a short while sometimes even after a few weeks.

If it turns out that it's actually a faulty part, diagnosing the part can be quite tricky especially if you don't have any known good spare parts just lying around the place. A power surge could easily take out a power supply and go further down the line to your beloved motherboard. Try replacing the parts one at a time to isolate the faulty part.

If you're still out of luck at this stage I'd recommend taking it to a professional.

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My computer crashed last night

2008-07-23T19:51:00.000-07:00

Well it would seem that no one is out of the firing line when it comes to a computer crashing.

I was happily strolling around The Barrens (World of Warcraft for those few who may not know where that is) fighting monsters, picking flowers and attempting poorly to master the art of mage-ism when the game suddenly dropped back to the main menu. That's weird I thought.. Next thing the game closed and I found my self at my Windows Vista desktop. Even weirder.. Ok, this could be some strange sign from above telling me that I should probably stop playing and perhaps clean the house or spend time with my Fiancé. But before I could run my game again the computer decided it was going to completely shut down and turn off. Did i say WEIRD?? Never mind, I'll just power it back on and hopefully it will boot properly so I can take a look at a few things and run some tests. On powering it up again...NOTHING!?!?! WHAT THE?? *very wide eyed*

What am I going to do now?

Luckily for me I know what to do, and I've got the tools to do so. There's heaps of software out and about for running diagnostics and testing for software or hardware faults. Some of this is even located on your Windows installation CD. It helps to have a little bit of knowledge when running these programs.

A common tool on the Windows installation CD is a command called 'chkdsk' or Check Disk Utility. It's designed to run a a series of diagnostic tests on your computers hard drive and will verify and repair (optional) the integrity of the file system. Simply put, it checks to make sure Windows files are all ok and intact.

Steps to do this;

Make sure your BIOS is set to boot from CD (check your manual for settings).
Turn on the computer and insert your Windows disk.
When told to do so, press a key to boot from the disk (this will take some time).
On the first screen press 'R' to enter the recovery console (a text based command line version of Windows)
Now, there are HEAPS of commands to type here but we want to use the Check Disk utility so type in 'chkdsk c: /r' and hit [enter].

The Check Disk Utility will commence and run a full test as described above. I've seen this test take up to 5 hours, depending on how much data is on the hard drive so don't hang around and watch it. That is unless your a geek like me and NEED to see what’s going on.

I've used this utility to fix various windows boot errors and it’s a great utility to run on a regular basis. Ideally the test should finish and tell you it has repaired some errors, then type 'exit' and your computer should restart. Hopefully your computer should boot back up into windows and more importantly back into World of Warcraft.

This is the point where I knew that something more sinister was going on. Errors and orphaned files shooting up my screen, saying this and saying that and.....SYSTEM FREEZE. What? Why? I've been a good boy!!!

Just to make sure, I run this test again just to see what will happen and I get the same result.

So at this point I know that there's something seriously wrong with my computer but I still don't know exactly what's wrong with it. There’s two things I decided I could do at this stage and that’s reload my operating system or test the hard drive for faults. If the hard drive is faulty, there’s no point trying to reinstall my Operating System because the drive will need to be replaced anyway.

I delve into my box of tricks (folder of disks) and grab the one which is titled 'Seatools Boot Disk'.

All hard drive manufacturers provide software and diagnostic tools for users to test the integrity of their hardware and to be able to diagnose any faults. You will be able to find these at the manufacturer’s website. Before you do that you'll need to find out your hard drive brand by removing the panel from the bottom of your laptop or removing the side off your case. The Seatools utility has a generic test which can be used on most brands of hard drives.

If the test completes with no faults, you will definitely need to reload your operating system or perhaps have a professional look at it.

I look at the clock. It's 2:11am. Problem solved..well found at least. I have a faulty hard drive. 99 reported bad sectors (like a scratch on a record). OUCH!

Which leads me to my next problem..where's my backup??

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How to get people to spend more time on your website

2008-07-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

If you can get your customers to stay on your site longer, it will help you to build a relationship with them and make them more likely to purchase from you.

Most visitors don't spend more than a couple of minutes on your site, so they aren't exposed to your brand or your products for very long. However, if you can offer something to your visitors that will keep them there, they will be in contact with your brand for a lot longer. This will, at the very least, put you at the top of their mind and could potentially increase your sales.

The key to getting visitors to stay longer on your site is to give them access to something valuable. This can include educational tools, detailed information on your products and past work and even entertainment. Some features you can add to your website to make it more interactive and informative are:

Photo Gallery
Case Studies/Bios
Internet Forum
Blogs
Articles
RSS feeds
Quizzes
Competitions
Polls

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How to create winning newsletters

2008-07-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

Producing a newsletter used to be a hard, complex and costly project, not only in writing the material, but also in producing the newsletter and getting it out to contacts.

Thankfully that era is now changing, with the Internet and email making it so much easier, faster and more economical to send out newsletters.

As a business, what do you really get from producing a newsletter? There are a lot of great business benefits from email newsletters, including:

Build relationships (with current and past clients, prospects, alliances, suppliers etc) to increase sales
Position your business as a valuable resource and as an expert in the field
Obtain and retain the mindshare of your customers
Build your creditability
Illustrate the advantages of your services and products
Educate and inform your readers
Widen your audience

And what does that all really mean for your business?

It increases the length of time your clients stay with you
It increases the money they spend
It increases number of people they refer onto you
It can consistently attract new clients to your business

And now, thanks to the Internet, newsletters are very cost-effective, environmentally friendly and simple marketing tool for any business to use.
The content of your newsletter is vitally important – if your stories aren’t relevant or interesting, you won’t get many readers and you will be wasting time and money. Here are some potential sources of content for your newsletter:

Relevant articles written by you, your staff or by a freelance writer
Articles from your association or industry
Articles written by your business alliances
Relevant industry news and trends
Case studies, testimonials and examples
'How to' articles
Material from clients and readers
Questions and answers from readers
A readers poll

Here are some handy tips to make your newsletters professional and effective:

Schedule the frequency of your newsletter and stick to your deadlines - this is important for your audience and will ensure your business gets the full value from producing them
Know your audience and obtain regular feedback (get copies of your competition e-newsletters so you can be better, carry out surveys regularly, ask your contacts what they want to read)
Plan your content - keep it unique and pertinent to your existing and prospective clients
Use a newsletter template - consistency is important
Remember it is a newsletter, not an advertisement - the rule of thumb is that newsletters should be 80% for the reader and 20% about your business (otherwise they won't read it next time)It’s all in the headline - make sure your headlines are going to grab your audience and entice them to read more
You are there to 'express' not to 'impress' - keep your language simple with little or no jargon
Proofread, proofread, proofread - get someone to proof read your newsletter because nothing looks more unprofessional than spelling and grammar mistakes
Keep your stories short - people don't have the luxury of unlimited time, so if you have a lot of additional detail that you want to add, give people the option to read more on your website
Keep the number of stories to a minimum – aim for 3 to 5 stories
Do not display everyone's email address if you send using your own email program - use the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) function
Always include:

o A newsletter signup field that automatically updates your database
o A 'forward to a friend' function to facilitate the referral process
o A table of contents to entice the recipient to want to read on
o A privacy statement
o An unsubscribe function so you meet the SPAM laws
o A text/HTML option for future emails

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How to capture the details of your site visitors

2008-07-23T17:43:00.000-07:00

The Internet has advanced so much in the last few years that websites are no longer just brochures that your customers browse before calling you or visiting your store. Websites now have the ability to facilitate businesses – they can generate leads, customers can purchase your products online and you can use your website to engage in regular communication with your contacts.

Most businesses want to visitors to their websites to either make on online purchase or make an enquiry. Often, this is also the goal of a person when they arrive on the website, so both parties get their desired result. However, on some occasions, prospects are simply browsing the site for information and won’t immediately become customers.

Are you doing something on your site to capture the details of these people? Just because they aren’t willing to purchase from you right now, doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future. So it is important that you get their details so you can communicate with them and convert them into customers.

So what can you do to gather their information? A great way to capture the contact details of your prospects is to offer some kind of incentive on your website. Great incentives include:

Newsletter – useful stories and information that is sent via email to your database of contacts on a regular basis. Many businesses use email newsletters because they are an effective way to communicate with prospects and increase sales.
Ebook – ebooks are electronic publications that can be downloaded from a website. They are typically educational, informative guides to particular topics and are used by businesses to share their expertise.
White paper – similar to an ebook, a white paper is an electronic publication available for download. Whitepapers tend to be research or reports compiled by businesses and contain useful information and data.
Competition – create a competition on your website that users can enter into to win a prize. The prize can be something from your on business or something of value from an external source. Consumers love getting something for nothing, so competitions are a great way to get their details.

Once you have chosen one of these tactics, you need to create a signup form and place it on your website so prospects have to fill in their details in order to get access to your offer. Most people view this process from a WIIFM ('What's In It For Me') perspective, so they will be happy to share their details with you if they are getting something in return.

Here are a few tips to help you successfully capture details with your offer:

Make the incentive valuable - as mentioned, your prospects will only give you their details if they are getting something in return, so offer them an incentive that is interesting and valuable. Newsletters are a great tool, but many people already gets lots of these, so try also offering an ebook that contains some expert advice from you on a topic that relates to your target market. If ebooks aren't for you, try running a competition with a valuable prize, such as free consultation or product.
Make the offer visible - for your offer to capture lots of details for you database, it needs to grab the attention of your site visitors. It should stand out from the surrounding content, be on every page of your website and appear above the fold so visitors don't have to scroll down the page to find it. Don’t just use the form to promote the offer – if it something really special and interesting, create an eye-catching advertisement and display it around your site.
Make the form easy - while most people will be willing to share their name and email address with you, they usually won't bother filling out your form if you ask for too many of their personal details. So limit the amount of information you request from them in order to get as many prospects to respond as possible. With most database marketing systems, the details collected on your website will be automatically added to your database and you can automate an instant email to be sent to them.
Use more than one incentive – all your prospects are different and will therefore like different things. While some may be interested in your ebook, others would prefer a competition. To ensure that you don’t miss out on anyone, use a variety of incentives on your site. For example, have a constant newsletter signup on your website, and alternate between a whitepaper and a competition each month. This will meet the needs of all your prospects and increase your response rate.

Once you have got the contact details of these prospects and added them to your database, it’s important that you engage in regular communication with them to build up a relationship.

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How do I burn a DVD?

2008-07-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

There are 3 main ways to burn a DVD;

Data DVD
Multimedia DVD
Commercial DVD

Burn a data DVD

This is the easiest of the 3 processes. Normal computer files like documents, business files, letters, documents and the like are only going to be used on a computer so they don't need to be converted in order for other devices to read the information. All a computer needs is a DVD drive to be able to read the DVD disk.
New computers generally come pre loaded with a cut down version or free version of popular software titles and will work with most DVD burners. On the burning options simply choose a data DVD and complete what the popup windows tell you. A single layer DVD disk can hold about 4.7GB of data while a dual layer can hold around 9GB. Burning times will vary depending on the speed of your burner, normally about 15-20 minutes.

Burn Multimedia

You can copy the recorded tv from your computer or your home movies to a DVD disk so they can be played in a normal DVD player which is connected to your TV.
Multimedia files are normally much larger than computer files but can still be burnt quite easily. The bundled software that comes with new computers can generally produce some simple end results but you may want to end up with something more professional and may need to purchase some software.
Prices range anywhere from $100 upwards.
You can add features like chapters so your views can skip to their favourite scenes, add titles and subtitles, create menu's and can even add DRM (digital rights management) to make it difficult for someone to copy your bread and butter

Burn a commercial DVD

You can also use your computer to make copies of commercial DVD's. Now, it isn't illegal if you already own the movies and want to use them to archive and protect your originals however it is illegal to make copies of movies you have rented from a video store to keep or to sell.
You'll need something more than your DVD burner and bundled software. You need to crack the DRM. There are may free downloads that are used to bypass the DRM and rip the information from the DVD to your hard drive. Some DVD's out these days are dual-layer and are far too large to actually fit onto a 4.7GB DVD without shrinking them first. Once this is done you can then use your normal burning software to produce a final copy of the original. Keep in mind too that after you shrink the DVD it will result in a much lower quality. The sound may not sync and the quality of the picture may be dark or blurred in some instances.

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How do I backup?

2008-07-23T17:41:00.001-07:00

Data backup consists of storing your critical files from your computer to an external source. By doing this, if your computer system decides it's going to pack it in you'll still be able to restore your files from this backup.

If you've never had your computer fail and lose those important wedding or baby photos or an irreplaceable business file then you're one of the lucky ones. I can comment first hand on what an important and invaluable step a backup can be.

A computer crash can be incredibly costly in terms of down-time and recovery of files from a damaged or dead hard drive, if even possible. You'd be surprised at what it can cost.

Data backup can be a quick and non intrusive process when configured properly, and it will save you loads of time in the long run.

Different media such as external hard drives, flash drives, NAS hard drives and cd's or dvd's all have their pros and cons, and I recommend using third party software to automate your backup process in order to reduce the time impact. The amount of data you need to backup will usually determine your backup option.

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Getting your emails opened

2008-07-22T23:44:00.000-07:00

Email marketing has become a popular way for businesses to engage in regular communication with their prospects and customers, because it is simple to use and highly cost-effective. However, as the popularity of email marketing has grown, so has the amount of spam we receive in our email inboxes on a daily basis.

In order to combat the increase of spam and keep it out of inboxes, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email programs have developed numerous filters. Unfortunately for businesses, many legitimate emails get caught up by the spam filters and are never seen by the consumer.

This means that getting business emails through electronic gatekeepers and getting the recipients to open them is fast becoming an art form.

There are three gatekeepers who automatically check out emails before they are received and delete those which they believe to be potential spam (unsolicited emails):

* Your recipient’s ISP
* Your recipient’s email program
* Your recipient themselves (who will take a quick glance to decide whether to read or delete your message)

This guide will teach you the key points you need to know to get your emails through these gatekeepers and achieve a high open rate.

ISPs and email programs

To reduce the chance of having your emails marked as spam and deleted by the ISP or email program, follow these recommendations:

* In your subject line, avoid:
o CAPITALS
o Punctuation!
o Symbols #
o RE:
o Common words like ‘free’, ‘guarantee’, ‘advertisement’, ‘sex’ etc
* In your content, avoid:
o Excessive punctuations, for example !!! or ???
o Multiple symbols like $$$
o 'Click here' multiple times
o Selling words to strangers like ‘Dear Friend’, ‘order today’, ‘money back guarantee’ etc
* In your from line, avoid sender addresses such as:
o info@yourdomain.com
o admin@yourdomain.com
o mail@your domain.com

The consumer

Consider these statistics:

* 63.3% of consumers say the 'from' line most often determines whether to open or delete an email
* 38% of consumers cited the subject line as the determining factor of 'opens'

Consumers are tough when it comes to opening emails – if they don’t recognise the sender’s name or if the subject line sounds like spam, they won’t hesitate to hit delete or report you as a spammer. To avoid this, follow these recommendations:

* In the from line, put in a person's email address, not:
o admin@yourdomain.com
o info@yourdomain.com
o None at all
* Subject line tips:
o Keep it short and simple
o Incorporate a benefit (not just features)
o Be honest (dishonesty will alienate your audience and it is illegal to use misleading material including false headlines)
o Use the power of the Internet and test out several subject lines, then look at your reports to establish which works the best

Also, use personalisation by mentioning the person's name in the first couple of lines of text. This will triple the incidence of opened emails. Don't just stop at their name - look at how else you can personalise your messages, such as location or last purchase details.

You have just 3 seconds to engage with your readers and let them know you aren’t sending spam. Make sure you take full advantage of the sender line, subject line and the greeting, because these can make or break your campaign.

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Getting the most out of your online advertising

2008-07-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

To get great results from sales, seminars, whitepapers or other promotions your business is running, you will need to advertise them online. Online advertising is a relatively cost-effective method for attracting your target audience to your promotions and getting conversions.

The different types of online advertising include Pay-Per-Click advertising on search engines, links or images on other websites or newsletters and links or images within your own newsletter or on your website.

One of the biggest determining factors of successful online advertising is the landing pages that are connected to your ads. A landing page is a specialised page on your website that users are directed to from an outside source, such as an advertisement in the form of a link or an image. Landing pages are focused on getting the user to take a particular action, such as purchase a product or sign up for a seminar.

Landing pages are different from a typical website page, because they do not contain the navigation and content of the main site. They are focused on getting the use to take just one action, so other navigation is too distracting. Typical landing pages contain the following:

Logo and header of the business (same as website)
Overview of the offer or promotion
Benefits of the product or service
Call to action (typically a short signup form or a ‘buy now’ button)

The most effective online advertisements are those that link directly to focused landing pages that are an extension of the advertisement. This is because the person that has clicked on your advertisement is interested in whatever is being offered and wants more detailed information. The biggest mistake that online advertisers make is linking their advertisements to their home page – the person wants to learn about the promotion they clicked on, not your company history and your complete product catalogue.

Having a landing page can be the difference between having 5 or 50 people sign up for your promotion. Therefore, it is important that you do your research and create an effective landing page to boost your conversion rates and maximise your online advertising.

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Get your online and offline marketing working together

2008-07-22T23:38:00.000-07:00

Most businesses spend a large percentage of their profits on promoting their business online and offline to their customers. However, many of these businesses are missing out on the full benefit of their marketing activities because they are not integrating the offline activities with their online presence.

Integration is very important because you will be missing out on many potential customers if the online and offline aren’t working together. For example, if a prospect comes across an advertisement for your business without your website address in it, they won’t be able to access further information and will go to another business.

Also, customers can become very confused if there is not obvious relationship between what they see on your website and what is in your brochures or newspaper ads. To ensure you are getting the most value for money out of all your marketing, follow the tips below to get your online and offline marketing working together.

There are several really easy ways to integrate online and offline marketing of your business:

Match the look and feel - Your website and online marketing needs to look similar to your offline branding. If your emails don’t look the same as your brochures or you use a different logo on your website to the one you use in your newspaper ads, people won’t recognise your brand and you will lose customers. So make sure your corporate colours and your logo are consistent throughout all your marketing.
Use the same slogans and messages - Any catch phrases or messages that you include in one of your marketing activities should be carried over into all of them. Your main business slogan should appear on every piece of marketing material that you create, and messages from particular offline campaigns should appear on your website. The best way to get people to remember you brand and become your customers is consistency, so make sure you use the same messages in all your marketing.
Put your website address on everything - This is by far the easiest way to integrate your online and offline marketing, and it is usually the most overlooked. Your website address needs to appear on absolutely everything – there is no point having one if you aren’t telling people about it. Put it on your business cards, letterheads, invoices, brochures, uniforms, outdoor and car signage and in every single advertisement you create. This will increase your website traffic and your sales leads.
Use the keywords that appear in your offline ads - Everyone in business is talking about keywords, because they have become one of the most important factors in marketing campaigns. To get your online and offline activities working together, you need to use the keywords from your offline ads in your website or bid for them on search engines. This will ensure that people who see your ad and then search for something they read in it will be directed to your site.
Link landing pages to your ads - For your advertising campaigns to be successful, they must have landing pages on your website. To fully integrate your offline and online marketing, any campaigns that you run must be linked to a landing page. So if a prospect sees your newspaper ad with a particular offer, they can type in the URL in the ad and be taken to a page that is all about the offer they saw in the ad. Your offer will generate far more leads and sales if it links to an effective landing page.

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Get involved in online communities

2008-07-22T23:30:00.000-07:00

A great way to encourage and facilitate feedback from customers and prospects and strengthen your relationships with them is to get involved in online community groups.

An online or virtual group is a group of people that primarily interact via a website, making individual contributions by knowledge sharing. There are many different types of online communities, including:

Wikis - A website that can be edited by anyone through their browser. The world’s most famous wiki is online encyclopedia Wikipedia
Blogs - A website where the 'blogger' can post informal thoughts, comments and advice in the form of a journal. We use a blog on our website to educate and inform our customers and prospects. Read about the Bloomtools Blog Manager tool.
Chat rooms - An online area where users can chat with each other in real-time about topics of interest. Some of the most popular chat rooms on the Internet can be found in Yahoo! Groups
Internet forums - similar to a chat room, a forum allows users to participate online discussions related to particular topics. Learn about the Bloomtools Internet Forum tool
Bookmarking sites - a site where users can share sites of interest that they have bookmarked. The bookmarking site del.icio.us has grown to become one of the most-visited social websites on the Web
Social networking - websites where users can create profiles of themselves and connect with friends around the world. The biggest social networking site is Facebook, which has more than 34 million members.

In order to make online community groups a successful brand building strategy for your business, it is important that you understand the key figures in these groups:

Peripheral - An outsider to the group. May observe and view content on occasion but doesn’t add to the community or want to be part of the group
Inbound – A newcomer who is engaged with the community and on the way to becoming a full participant. Start to provide content to the discussions and tentatively interacts with others
Insider – Participant who is fully committed to the community. Consistently adds to community discussion and content and interacts with others regularly
Boundary - A leader of the group, moderates membership participation and interactions. Community members respect them and their opinions
Outbound – Participant that is leaving the community due to new relationships, new positions or new outlooks.

Strategies for getting involved

Get others (Boundary and Insiders) within communities to talk about your product
Using this type of "referral" system can generate a huge amount of traffic or sales for you business. The boundaries and insiders have established themselves as leaders and others in the group listen to what they say.
Become an expert (Boundary)
If you are constantly involved in online communities and give valuable comments, you can gain status as a moderator or expert. Once you have this position, you can make recommendations and people in their thousands will listen. Establishing yourself as a boundary will require a lot of work, but is a very valuable way to promote your brand and engage with your prospects.
Provide a link to your website
This is the best option for beginners or those that don’t have a lot of time. You need to provide a link in your signature, so that when other users want to learn more about you after they have read your post, they will be taken to your website. This can also help with optimization as you create more inbound links to your site.
A word of warning - the people that use online communities are generally very accepting of new ideas but they resent their groups being used as for free advertising. So if you do become involved in these groups, make sure your contributions are valuable, relevant and interesting, not just thinly-disguised marketing messages.
If you build a reputation as an expert in the group, the other users will visit your business website and spread the word about your brand. But, if you just use the group to blatantly promote yourself, the group has the word of mouth power to damage your brand.

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Easy ways to generate loads for your business

2008-07-22T23:26:00.000-07:00

Here are some lead generation strategies that you may not have thought of using for your business:

Networking groups

Alliances

Brochures

Trade shows

Local business expos
Chamber of commerce shows
School business expos
Industry trade shows

To generate leads at trade shows you will need to be really prepared and have thought a lot about your techniques.

Referrals

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Dangers of using offshore or cheap web developers

2008-07-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I have been bitten before and I have heard countless similar stories of businesses who have used cheaper alternatives and have as a consequence, had to spend much more money to 'fix' their site or have lost the entire site (or files) due to poor back up systems and hosting servers.

I recently heard a successful business person speak on the merits of using offshore web developers and designers. I completely agreed with many of his points. In some instances, using offshore software developers, and designers can be of great benefit to your company - both for quality and price. However buyer beware. If you are not properly informed you may find yourself considerably out of pocket, with an inferior product and a good deal of heartache. At worst you may find yourself with nothing. As a local businessperson, active member of my local Chamber, proud advocate of 'shopping locally', and as a contributing Sponsor to Coomera Chamber of Commerce I feel that it is important to also advise members of the possible pitfalls of choosing an offshore alternative to local business suppliers. This scenario can actually be replicated across many industries.

1. Intellectual Property - If you are commissioning software development, and do not safeguard the ownership of your i.p the dangers of outsourcing are multiplied. Foreign developers can resell your software developed at your expense internationally or promote it to competitors. The same applies to designs.

2. Quality Assurance - Attitude to Quality Assurance varies considerably the world over. If you choose a local developer, at least you know that development, design and programming are project managed right here. Time, distance, language barriers are no obsticle when y you can communicate with a supplier, simply, in real time at a far less costly rate. With the outsource model, you are dependant on a foreign 'unknown' entity you have never met in person for Quality Assurance that may be of a much lower standard than offered locally. How do you really know that you are not dealing with a child prodigy who may have an amazing software development skills but is in it for a quick buck and has absolutely no idea of project management, timelines, quality assurance, maturity, business ethics and committment? Very likely scenario and one that is replicated often.

3. Secure Infrastructure - Cheap offshore servers can and do go down.....often. How do you know that the company you have chosen to work with has a secure facility, with a secure infrastructure? Will you fly over and check for yourself or do you even know what to check for? What sort of assurances do you have that this company is going to be around tomorrow, next week, next year or well into the future?

4. Websites are not disposable - Our society is now very much focused on disposable products but this does not extend to your online business presence. Your online software and design must meet and service future demands. Furthermore, why cheapen your branding by buying a cheap design? A cheap website is invariably a 'tanked' or template website. The cost of sales are low because the design fundamentals are rehashed over and over. Why sabotage your online sales potential by not following basic SEO and navigation rules? What message are you wanting to send out about your company - that you are cheap and cheerful or efficient and professional? Both for the benefit of your web users and Search Engines you want to ensure that your website is built properly, using fundamental seo rules and that it has sustainability OR you will have to fork out more money to redo it properly in the future. Sometimes the offer really is too good to be true.

5. A little information makes some people dangerous - You have heard it before and this is so true when it comes to web design & development. Further to my points on Quality Assurance, you may find that the resume of a prospective offshore developer is very impressive indeed. However, make sure you inspect every single site and even contact the site owner to make sure that this person really did create it. Furthermore what software are they using to develop your site? It may be just simple template software supplied with their computer program. This translates to bad coding and a poorly functioning website. What ongoing support can they actually give you? Are they just going to build the site and then leave you to market it? What guarantees can they give you? Is there a warranty for their work? Would you really entrust a good deal of your money to a stand alone entity who may have minimul skills and training and possibly no real back up and support if you have never met them? What happens if your site goes down and they are on holiday?

4. Outsourcing is bad for our economy - Shop locally and support your community. I personally believe that being a member of the Coomera Chamber of Commerce is not just about self promotion and business networking. I live here. My kids go to school here. I shop here for everything from my groceries to building supplies on my home. I plan to live here for a long time as do my children. This is my community and I am proud to be a member of it. So if I was given a choice I would choose to buy locally, because it improves my community.

Lastly, a new website should not be excessively expensive. You need to sit with a developer or project manager who is able to quickly ascertain your core objectives, target market and branding needs and translate these into an effective online model. You need to be able to easily communicate with your web developer and feel assured that your investment will be secure and have longevity. I always say that if you are prepared to do your homework then you wont be disappointed.

Best of luck!

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Building your database of contacts

2008-07-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

Most successful businesses have a large database of contacts, including clients, past clients, prospects, alliances and suppliers, which they keep up-to-date and fully utilise.

This is why your contact list is a goldmine for your business. The number and variety of strategies you can utilise with it are limitless, as are the results you can achieve from it. Using your database well can generate leads for your business and increase your sales.

Here are a few tips to build your database:

Get every new customer to complete a form (on your website or at your premises) that will automatically capture their details and populate your database of contacts.
Send a postcard or letter to your clients giving them an incentive to sign up on your website. For example if it will be opened by the right person, include a request with your next invoice for their email address (if you have all other details but not the email address).
Get everyone in your team to ask each new caller, visitor, or appointment for permission to be placed on your mailing list for your free e-newsletter and special offers that go to members only. Describe your content from a WIIFM perspective so they have an incentive to say yes.
Run a competition on your website or through other mediums. Include a tick box, already ticked, for receiving future offers.
Promote a 'sign up' form on the home page of your website (or better still on every page within your site) that automatically places their details into your contact database.
Promote the 'sign up' facility in your newsletter so that if someone 'sends it to a friend' they too can subscribe easily.
Have a subscribe link in the signature file on all your team's outgoing emails (i.e. at the end of each email).
Look at every point of contact you have with people and utilize it to gather details. Ask people to join your database at:

o Seminars
o Workshops
o Trade shows (get cards from fellow presenters and attendees in your target market)
o Networking functions

Supply articles to other businesses and include a link to your website with a sign up page

An important factor in getting people to join your database is the signup form you ask them to complete. Here are some tips for the form:

It needs to be simple and fast for the user
Briefly describe what they are signing up for and its frequency so they know what they are getting
Keep your details requested under 7 points
Where possible, use drop down boxes for speed and efficiency
Use a form that automatically updates your contact list to save you time
Use incentives to encourage signips, including prizes, sample products, ebooks, white papers or discounts

Put all of these processes into consistent action and your database of contacts will be constantly growing. And so will your business.

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Boost your business by being the expert

2008-07-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

It is a widely-known fact in business that people love buying, but hate being sold to. So how do you overcome this as a business that has products and services to sell to customers?

You need to be the doctor – the expert that listens to their problems, diagnoses them and then tells them what they need to do to fix it. People will be far more receptive to your messages if they think that you genuinely care about them and want to help them.

Positioning yourself or your business as the expert or leader in a particular field is an effective tool for both branding and sales. It is great for your brand image if you have a reputation as an expert and your prospects are more likely to buy from you if you are a leader in your industry or niche.

So how do you position yourself as an expert in the market? Through your website, of course! Here are some handy strategies:

Blogs - writing a regular blog on a topic you are knowledgeable about is a great way to share your expertise with your clients and prospects and get them to trust you. Make your entries are useful, interesting and regular to get the best results from your blog. There are free Blog software applications available.
Article syndication - as a businessperson, you most likely have a lot of knowledge of your area of expertise. Share this knowledge, build your profile and position yourself as an expert by writing useful articles and submitting them to article listing websites, ezines and your alliances. Create the articles, publish the articles and then users and other sites will receive these as an RSS feed directly to them.
RSS feeds - you have two options with RSS feeds, and both are equally as good for building your reputation. You can display the RSS feeds of other reputable organisations or businesses on your website, making your site the best source for information. Or, you can get your RSS feed displayed on other popular and important websites where many prospects could see it and view you as an expert. Find out more about RSS feeds here. Learn about the Bloomtools RSS Feeds tools.
ebooks - writing an ebook is another great way to share your knowledge and to promote your business to prospects. Write a valuable ebook with reliable, useful information and your prospects will think of you as a leader in your field and will feel more comfortable buying from you. Learn how to write an ebook.
Memberships - being a member of important organisations related to your field is a great way to position your brand as a leader. Research all the industry groups, chambers of commerce and trade organisations that are relevant to you and join as many as possible. Displaying your membership to these groups on your website will make you appear trustworthy and professional.

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Office or Lotus?

Do you think Google needs to be concerned about Bing?

Write great website copy

Use keywords

Include hyperlinks in the text

Use meaningful headings and subheadings

Use bulleted lists

Use the inverted pyramid style

Halve the word count of normal writing

Avoid jargon and complex words

Website gives business a lift

How the Internet can streamline your business

Simple seminars

Feedback surveys

Common client requests

Customer loyalty

Online client area

Motivating your team

White Hat and Black Hat SEO techniques

Web domain questions answered

Still confused about Domains? I've answered some often asked questions which will hopefully help narrow the gap between you and cyberspace.

What is a Domain Name?

What's the difference between .com, .net, and .org domain names?

Who can register a domain name?

Do I own the domain I register?

What does "transferring" a domain name mean?

Do I automatically have a website once I register my domain name?

What is "URL forwarding"?

What does "web hosting" mean?

Where do I host my website?

Using flash on your website

The latest internet usage statistics

Spam trigger words to avoid

'Google Analytics' website benchmarking

Getting your business online

Step 1Form a strategic plan

Step 2Choose an internet partner

Step 3Prepare a creative brief

Step 4Secure a domain name

Step 5Add value to your site

Step 6Make your website live

Step 7Promote your website

Get more readers with punchy email subject lines

Easy ways to generate leads for your business

Here are some lead generation strategies that you may not have thought of using for your business:

Networking groups

Alliances

Brochures

Trade shows

Referrals

9 Facts about SEO that all businesses need to know

Here are the top 9 facts you should know about SEO:

Fact 1 – SEO is a long, ongoing process

Fact 2 – Do your keyword research

Fact 3 – Quality content is the key to success

Fact 4 - You need keywords throughout your whole site

Fact 5 - Black hat techniques don’t work

Fact 6 - Search engines can't read images

Fact 7 - The playing field can change at any time

Fact 8 – Updating your site regularly will make you search engine friendly

Fact 9 – Getting links is essential

My iPhone makes my computer blue screen

So, I get a call from a friend of mine..

How do I choose keywords for my site?

Graphics on your website

Google launches petrol price tracker

What is a USB flash drive

Tips for email marketing

The Mailing List

Removal from your mailing list

When size does matter

Mailing Frequency

Timing of Mailing

Subject Line

Reporting

Call to Action

The design of the email

Uniformity

Check your email thoroughly

Step 1
Form a strategic plan

Step 2
Choose an internet partner

Step 3
Prepare a creative brief

Step 4
Secure a domain name

Step 5
Add value to your site

Step 6
Make your website live

Step 7
Promote your website